The GIS lab at NEMA
Photo by: Wilbur Wejuli
levels. A number of drawbacks have held its progress in The above challenges are related to the fact that the en-
balance. These include: tire life-cycle for establishing, operating, and maintain-
lack of appreciation at the district level that environ- ing an evolving and growing environment information
mental information generation at that level is for the system was not properly thought through at the initia-
benefit of the planning processes there, rather than just tion of the process. Two examples illustrate this point.
an input to NEMA’s work. Any GIS requires huge amounts of disk space to sup-
inability of the environment officers to mobilise the re- port the analysis and to store the information generated,
quired local revenues to support the district EIS’s. This but the capacity of the computers that were provided was
may not be unique to the environment information so low that the heavy duty programmes needed for im-
sector. Studies show that although Local Governments age analysis or other GIS work could not be installed or
enjoy autonomy in the collection and allocation of their those that were, run very slowly. Secondly, staff turnover
own revenues, none of the local governments in Ugan- that is a normal part of working life seems to have been
da has been able to fully finance its development initia- ignored. Both local governments and NEMA have failed
tives without the assistance of donors (Bazaara 2003). to factor that into the project life-cycle by having regular
lack of output devices like plotters and relevant printers. training and refresher programmes for the environment
Thus there is a limitation in the process of producing officers. So when a trained DEO leaves, the skills gap left
captivating GIS and other graphical outputs that could is never plugged.
stimulate interest in the technologies and outputs pro-
duced through EIS implementation. Some suggestions for improvement include appropriate
staff turnover, lack of software, non-functional or lack equipment, a dedicated manager to implement the GIS
of appropriate equipment. For instance, in Mbale and and the development and implementation of an action
Jinja the DEOs who were trained in GIS have since left, plan for the EIS after installation and training (Nabiham-
while in Masindi, some of the hardware is no longer ba 2008). Financial sustainability should also be part of
functional due to a poor repair and maintenance cul- the action plan and systematically pursued during imple-
ture (Nakayenze 2008, Nabihamba 2008). mentation. The establishment of an effective monitoring
The Uganda Case Study 17
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