Abstract
There is no doubt that there is an enormous potential in using mobile technologies for good governance. For the past few years we have witnessed how basic mobile phones (voice and SMS) can empower citizens and affect the way citizens interact with each other and with the society as whole. This chapter describes a number of cases and pilots, focusing on East Africa, where mobile phones and mobile applications have been used for good governance purposes, either independently or as a compliment to other methods and strategies. However, many of these implementations are too often labelled success stories despite the lack of recipes for scaling-up and many projects remain just that – single experiences with no wider impact. This chapter critically examines some of the challenges as well as the main opportunities for improving good governance through the use of mobile phones and present ideas on how these projects could effectively be scaled-up.
This article is based on the draft discussion paper “Mobile phones for Good Governance: Challenges and Way Forward” presented at the W3C Workshop on the “Africa Perspective on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development”, held in Maputo (Mozambique), on April 1–2, 2009 (http://www.w3.org/2008/10/MW4D_WS/).
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Hellström, J. (2011). Mobile Governance: Applications, Challenges and Scaling-up. In: Poblet, M. (eds) Mobile Technologies for Conflict Management. Law, Governance and Technology Series, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1384-0_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1384-0_12
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