The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) has handed over 60,247 tablets previously used during the 2024 national housing and population census to the Ministry of ICT.
Speaking during the handover on Monday afternoon, UBOS Executive Director, Dr.Chris Mukiza said the tablets will now go to different government agencies for use for other government programs.
“A total of 36,000 tablets will go to Electoral Commission for their election management, another23,897 will go to local governments to strengthen PDM information system at the community level. This means each parish will get two tablets while each sub county community development officer will get a tablet to make 1496 tablets and town council CDOs will get 580 tablets among others,” Mukiza said.
He said municipal Community Development Officers, district/ city IT officers and local government statisticians will also get tablets.
“For the districts which don’t have statisticians, these will be managed by the district planner.”
According to Dr.Mukiza, UBOS is also transferring 350 tablets to Operation Wealth Creation.
The Ministry of ICT Permanent Secretary, Dr. Aminah Zawedde said the handover of the tablets by UBOS for use for other programs is evidence that government is no longer working in silos.
“As government we are able to share resources and reduce on cost of operation of government work. These will come in hand now that elections are on the doorway to enable Electoral Commission get ready for the electoral process,” Dr.Zawedde said.
She said the other tablets to be used for collecting data for the Parish Development Model program will also help government in implementation of this program.
“We had already got concerns by people at the parish level that they don’t have enough devices to carry out data collection and register beneficiaries for PDM. Now that we have these devices, it is going to make work easy since we will be collecting data in real time and be able to make informed decisions in time.”