e-Government: Decentralisation

With help from the French Embassy in Namibia, the Namibian government Directorate of Decentralisation were eager to embark on a communication and awareness programme to inform stakeholders, as well as to provide tools and information for role players in the process.

The first step was to consult with over fifty groups of stakeholders to establish what perceptions already existed, and further what information needs different parties had. Based on the feedback, our team worked with the DDC to develop their original vision and mission statements into a brand identity for the Decentralisation process. Templates were ultimately designed for print materials which the DDC communication team could use to produce reports, brochures and posters independently.

The DDC further required a web portal both as information resource for the general public, and to support the information needs of active role players in the process. For example, regional government wanted to be able to track down and then download secured official documents, training manuals and process guidelines as simply as possible from some form of e-library. To be in line with government policy, the portal needed to make use of OpenCMS, an enterprise level content management system developed in Java.

I was responsible to work with the DDC communications team to reconcile the aspirations of stakeholders with what could be practically realized given their resources. We were eager to build interactive tools, but realized also there was limited scope that the DDC would be able to support ambitious initiatives given the many other responsibilities of their staff.

The resulting website strikes a balance between the needs of different types of users seeking information, and the requirements of the DDC team to be able to update easily. It uses articles to make chunks of information easy to re-purpose and attempts to present key points in terms of the “Frequently Asked Questions” which emerged from our interviews.

The DDC communications team had limited web experience, but after a series of gently paced training sessions, they were able to update the portal, make use of the e-library as well as compile and send official newsletters completely independently.  Unfortunately – given the complexities of devolving the responsibility to communicate formally “on behalf of” government in an open forum, the online discussion feature has yet to be used.

see the web platform at http://www.decentralisation.gov.na