Why are Councils slow in adopting GIS?
Councils in Kenya have began adopting ICT. GIS, a component of ICT is a powerful planning tool for the Kenyan Councils. ICT has already paid off for the champion Councils in Kenya. Less than five Councils have experimented witth GIS in Kenya. What may be hindering the Councils to employ GIS in their planning?
GIS Solutions
GIS Solutions can be very inexpensive if you use Open Source. The main investment will be the hardware to run it on and training time. What solutions are you using now ?
Lack of support
We as ICT professionals understand the powerful tools ICT has including GIS. We as ICT officers do not a voice in the Council affairs. How do you convince a clerk to invest in GIS yet he does not even have an email? Councils buy vehicles worth millions but for the spent on a simple budget of 0.5m thye say its expensive!!! Its the clerks!!! clerks!!! clerks !! who inhibit ICT in genral.
Sensitization of the Council Stakeholders
Thanks for your comments. In my opinion, some clerks, infacta majority are eager to embrace ICT though they may not necessarily be ICT savy. Sensitization of the key personnel in ICT is important. The exercises that we have been conducting namely the ICT Roundtable have been very successfull in letting all the Council stakeholders- civic wing and the executive arm join the ICT bandwagon.
Rop
The Clerks are the CEO's so
The Clerks are the CEO's so they make the key decisions. But there are already some progressive Clerks who are using GIS (and other technology) to turn around their Councils. Good examples where this is happening are Taveta Town, Makueni County and Machakos Municipality. But you are right we believe the speedf is too slow, especially since we are not inventing anything new.
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