TransGov Wins 60,000 USD Penplusbytes/MAVC Tech4Governance Competition

TransGov, a web and mobile application that aggregates the various developmental projects that are being undertaken in Ghana, to enable citizens monitor project status at local and national level, beat off stiff contest from 10 others to win the Tech4Governance Innovation competition organised by Penplusbytes and Making All Voices Count (MAVC) on Saturday May 30 at the New Media Hub, Osu, Ako-Adjei, Accra. Under the theme “Innovations to Drive Improved Service Delivery and Better Electoral Process,” Tech4Governance Competition received over 40 entries from the tech and development space in Ghana.

The panel of judges, made up of Dorothy Gordon, Director – General, Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE), Nicholas De-Heer, Senior Programmes Officer, Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Veronica Boateng, National Information Technology Agency (NITA), Kinna Likimani, Blogging Ghana, and Patricia Dovi Sampson, Director of Research, Statistics & Information at the Ministry of Communications, came to this decision after each team made their pitch to them.

Dorothy Gordon expressed delight at what she termed the infectious enthusiasm exhibited by all the teams; describing the outcome of the event as ‘uplifting.’ “Some of the other projects are equally excellent and I’m hopeful we are going to see some develop into fully functional product for wider use.”

The winning team, represented by Prince Anim and Kwame Yeboah, submitted Transgov under the ‘Improve Service Delivery’ theme, which is primarily an SMS application to which people can subscribe to via a short code. Subscribers would then, via the assigned short codes and with names of specific districts of interest, be periodically updated on activities in the district, including project bidding, project execution, meeting times of the assembly.

‘Macheki’ - Interactive Voter Identity and Verification System took the 2nd place under ‘Bettering Electoral process’ theme. It is a web and mobile based application that displays real time demographics of voters and also makes provision for verification of voters. Richard Abbey, a member of the ‘Macheki’ team explained that their product will allow voters to verify their details lodged with the EC on an interactive mobile and web based application. “Our product will also allow, on that same platform, policy makers and other social activists, an ability to see a breakdown of registered voters using their demographics - age, sex, educational background etc.” he added.

Other entries are Open Voter Verifiability and Audit Platform, Eyes-in-the-Air (Media Drones), Election Monitor and RegVote; pitching ideas carved to solve problems in the Ghanaian Electoral process. The rest, targeting to improve Service delivery, were ‘Tieme’- Empowering Ghana through Mobile Cloud Data, Resident Watch, Making All Voices Matter (VOTO Mobile), Know Your Payments and The Big Idea: A model for Youth-led Accountability.

The winners will now go through an incubation phase where they will be supported with access to mentoring support, international networking and related tools and resources through MAVC’s South to South Lab.

ABOUT
Penplusbytes is a not-for-profit organization that seeks to empower the media through the use of Information and Communications Technology to advance journalism in the coverage of governance and accountability, new media and innovations, and mining, oil and gas.
Making All Voices Count (MAVC) is an international initiative that contributes towards effective governance and accountability by enabling citizen engagement and open, responsive government in 12 countries in Africa and Asia.