Following research on the use of ICTs for accountability in Africa, I am back in Uganda to set up a multimedia platform where people can report their problems with public service delivery. Which street has too many potholes? Which public hospital has no malaria medicine? Who is the best primary school teacher in Kampala? All these questions will be aired on a popular radio station in Kampala. People can reply by SMS and have their grievances or opinions count! Together with our media partners in Uganda we feed-back this data into the general public. Radio presenters presenting the survey questions will be updated realtime through our online dashboard so they can update listeners on the incoming reports. Radio debates and talk-shows with prominent politicians are enhanced by this direct interaction and feedback from listeners. Local leaders are asked to explain the situation on the ground and people get a better overview of what is going on in their community. Transparency, awareness and consequent accountability get a boosted with the use of the most popular media around: Radio and cell-phones.

By using the most popular media technologies available in Uganda (Radio and Mobile) we can create feedback loops that will produce crowdsourced data to accurately report failure in public service delivery. In this way people will get a clear overview and will be able to make informed choices and hold their leaders accountable. First broadcast have started in June 2011 and Trac FM is officially on a roll! To keep updated go to http://www.trac.pro and sign up for our newsletter or write me a mail at wdijkstra(at)trac.pro 

Here is an example of our interface. Radio presenters get to see this overview in their studio during their talk-show. Incoming SMS messages are automatically updated in the data-visualization