'How the rest of us can join the MPs' I-Pad party!'

Munching away @skaheru's blog piece[http://skaheru.wordpress.com] yesterday, I was specifically drawn to the part in which he took dig at a print media story on Dokolo district residents who have conveniently turned bee-hives into coffins and any-other 'scrap' accessory your mind can find home in!

This drew me to I-Pads freely handed to all 375 MPs at a cost of Ushs900m and wondered, if Dokolo residents could turn a bee-keeping project on which their livelihood depended into burial 'aid', what of MPs that move around with I-Pads like they are holding onto poodle pet-dogs!

If Parliament availed these hi-tech gadgets to cut down on stationery expenses, did it first examine whether;

(1) Were the 'hard-copied' Parliament business documents dropped in MPs offices being read any-way!

(2) If some could fail to read these hard copy documents which could be read even stealthily during plenary or committee meetings[Time which some use to sleep-off!], what of wired documents that will need downloading[our weak internet connection with-standing] and much more bite on one's concentration energy?

I believe even before diving into supplying I-Pads to MPs like they were dishing out Nsenene, a few things should have been crafted out;

 (1) Whoever is tasked with scripting documents to be wired to MPs must know[have known] that just like the rest of us(Ugandans), we rarely read passed the 3rd paragraph of a 20-plus page document, especially if the gist of the matter is not captured in those opening paragraphs or document header. Text 'irrelevancies' and 'redundant' statements should be nipped out to create more 'punchy' and precise information documents.

(2) MPs were supposed to be literally taught (classroom-style) on how to maximally use I-Pads, I-Pads are not information granaries that you only open in time of information drought!

You only make productive use of such documents when you share the information with people that best benefit from it.

MPs are simply representatives of a larger Uganda setting, therefore any information on Parliament business must be directly fed to respective constituencies, and this where I-Pads must come in handy.  

• ·         How can this be done?

(a) MPs must create what I call 'on-line constituency head committees’; these can be made up of 4-6 resident constituents who are tasked to;

 (i) create a constituency email group,

(ii) A constituency Social Media group and

(iii) A constituency mobile chat-room!

(b) This constituency head committee is then tasked to tap information from their Member of Parliament and broken down into local languages and shared among members in these groups. 

In this, we not only bridge the gap between Parliament and the masses, but we also account for such expenses by Parliament.

@gyezimania

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