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Uganda: We Cannot Wipe Out Corruption Without Good Records Management
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New Vision (Kampala)
OPINION
4 December 2007
Posted to the web 5 December 2007
Dr. Constance Okello-Obura
Kampala
ANY right-thinking Ugandan should salute the Government and people of Uganda for the tremendous efforts made to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). It is not an easy task to host such a big number of international delegates.
We should also be happy that one of the prominent issues agreed on by the CHOGM delegates is zero tolerance to corruption. We need to salute the delegates for considering this vice. Given the manner in which some people take corruption to be part of their lives, some of us highly predict that if records are properly kept, some officials will be locked up for embezzling CHOGM funds. The misappropriated funds cannot be legally recovered if records are mismanaged.
Piggot, a senior information solution consultant with the World Bank, once said that without good records, officials are forced to take decisions on an ad hoc basis, without the benefit of institutional memory. Fraud cannot be proven, meaningful audits cannot be carried out and government actions are not open to review.
Sound records management does not only underpin the due process, but enables accountability. There are several reasons why any government, committed to the rule of law, should maintain records and archival materials. Just to highlight a few.
The protection of the citizens' entitlements depends on pension records, social security records, land records, birth and death records
To preserve the rule of law, the government relies on legislative, court, police and prison records
Foreign relations, international obligations, communication with national and international bodies require good management of national and international obligation treaties
Good management of policy files, hospital records, school records, budget papers, accounting records, personnel records, tax records, election registers, procurement records, etc, demonstrates government's commitment to accountability to its citizens and promotion of good governance.
Sound records and information management facilitates fast decision-making and transparency in government operations. Given the above benefits of good records management, a cross-section of Ugandans were very disappointed by the action of the Government (Ministry of Education and Sports) to scrap the Bachelor of Library and Information Science (BLIS) and Diploma of Records and Archives Management (DRAM) of Makerere University from the list of courses under government sponsorship.
BLIS and DRAM are the only courses in public universities that train human resources for national and international records management. The person who advised the Government to make this unhealthy decision did not make any meaningful consultation and narrowly looked at the need of this country in terms of human resources. Look at a country like the US and see how good management of libraries and records are valued.
Zero tolerance to corruption will be difficult to achieve if Commonwealth countries and Uganda in particular, do not seriously address the issue of good records and information management.
What signals does the scraping of these important courses send to the public and the national policy-makers? That good management of records and information is not a priority in their national planning! I request the Government to revisit its decision on or whoever made the decision on scrapping BLIS and DRAM from government-sponsored courses. Let every policy-maker take good records and information management as a priority in the fight against corruption.
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The writer is a lecturer at Makerere University
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