MobiSAM (Mobile Social Accountability Monitoring) is a project that uses mobile technology to support two-way communication between citizens and government, on basic service delivery issues.  The project aims to support citizen engagement and government responsiveness, through providing platforms (not only technology related) that citizens can use to engage in social accountability practices. MobiSAM plays a strategic role, as it brings together individual and collective action with real time access to mechanisms to report issues to all key stakeholders. The MobiSAM technology incorporates both a reporting interface for citizens (via a mobile application (feature phone or smart phone), website, and SMS), and also a Ticketing function (mainly used by the municipality to address internal communication challenges) used for:

1. Direct citizen reporting (water, sanitation, roads, electricity, stray animals, and finance related)
2. Collating and visualizing reported problems through heat maps and graphs per ward area.
3. Monitoring reports by all registered users (citizens, civil society, media, municipalities) to facilitate evidence based engagement
4. Communication enabling the municipality to send SMSs to update citizens on the progress of their reports, provide information regarding planned/unplanned outages, and push out service delivery polls to assess the situation in different wards or citizen satisfaction in addressing an issue.

The project adapts a pragmatic approach to research, based on experiential knowledge development, and the application of artefacts to address the problem area. It is transdisciplinary in nature, incorporating information systems, computer science, journalism, sociology, and public policy. Our existing areas of research include, but are not limited to:

• Strategy formulation
• Change management and process reengineering in local government
• Building the capacity and motivation of government & citizens for digital citizen engagement
• Evaluation of Digital government and citizen engagement
• Mobile development in digital government
• Etc.

For further information on MobiSAM, please visit our blog (http://www.blog.mobisam.net/) and Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/mobisam.net/). To register to use MobiSAM in Makana Municipality, please visit the website www.mobisam.net

You may also contact the Co-Director Prof Caroline Khene (email: c.khene@ru.ac.za)

Funders (Current and Previous)

Last Modified: Fri, 02 Mar 2018 15:12:37 SAST