TANZANIA Comments on the Research Process • After the request letters were sent to the ministries and agencies, a follow up was made after one week. Some ministries, such as the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, communicated that the person responsible for information was away attending a parliamentary session. But even after the session was over he/ she never replied to the letter. • In some ministries, such as the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, no one answered the phone even after repeated attempts on different occasions. Where the call was answered, the researcher was asked to call back at another time, a request we followed up without success. • In other agencies, such as the Medical Stores Department, after several telephone follow up efforts, the researcher was asked to pay a physical visit to the office in order to meet the person responsible for handling the requests. Upon arrival at the office, the receptionist called the Public Relations Officer (PRO) to inform her of the researcher’s arrival. The PRO however, refused to receive the researcher because he did not have an appointment and because he identified himself as an independent researcher and the PRO, according to her statement, only deals with journalists. The official further informed the researcher that a request in writing would be answered in writing. Written feedback has never been received. • Another challenge regarding government offices is that when requests are made by phone in the morning, the receptionist will probably inform the requester that the person asked for is”currently in a meeting”. When calling back in the afternoon, the phone will most likely not be answered because staff will be out for lunch. This has been experienced on several occasions; one example is the Tanzania Foods and Drugs Authority (TFDA). Unfortunately, even when delivering the request letter to this agency, the MISA staff had to wait for more than 40 minutes to hand over the letter, because the receptionist was out for lunch. Follow-up calls were equally unsuccessful. • The habit of some agencies and ministries of not acknowledging receipt of letters constituted a challenge. • On several of the websites, some of the information is not provided for directly, links to other pages (e.g. Facebook) are given, or information has to be downloaded. For example, with the Medical Stores Department (MSD), information on procurement needs to be downloaded, which poses a challenge to someone with limited IT knowledge. • For any research to be successful, one cannot neglect the provision of adequate manpower and funding. This was a problem last year and still is a problem this year. The office has few staff members; therefore, it was challenging to handle all the office activities whilst at the same time conducting this kind of research. Summary of Key findings Website Analysis (Category 1) • Of the eight government and public institutions surveyed all had websites, of which some were updated on a regular basis. The website of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives is the only one where all the information requested 82 on the questionnaire is available. • Ample time was scheduled for a detailed and thorough examination of the websites. We were very cautious and keen in awarding scores for every question. When enough or satisfactory information was provided on a particular question, two marks were awarded but if the answer was half way, we awarded only one mark. When information was lacking, a mark of zero was given. • Many organizations are trying as much as possible to have information in both Swahili and English, but a number of them present information exclusively in English. • Unlike previous years, many organisations are updating their pages, though not on a daily basis. Current 2013 budget speeches could be found on some of them. In 2012 Information on budgets and procurement issues were rarely available, but now they are easily accessible on websites. • Some of the websites were particularly useful as good sources of information. They contained details that cannot be found easily on other websites. The Energy and Mineral’s website for example, contains information on names, addresses and telephone numbers of the staff, and working hours of respective institution. In addition emails can be monitored outside regular office hours. Written Requests for Information (Category 2) Access Denied • Letters with questions on specific topics for particular institutions were prepared and hand-delivered to the respective offices on the 28th of May. The staff that delivered the letters made sure every person who received the letter signed the dispatch form. • The institutions were given 21 days to reply, upon which time the information was considered denied. • After seven days, the institutions were supposed to have acknowledged the receipt of the letters. Only two ministries acknowledged within the given time, the Ministry of Water and Irrigation and the Ministry of Energy and Minerals. • MISA-TAN made several follow up calls to the other six institutions, on different occasions, reminding them of the letters. There were positive replies from some of them and discouraging ones from others, yet others did not respond to our calls. • In some of the offices we were told that those responsible were out of office, either on leave, safari or attending the tabling of their ministry’s budgets at parliament. Some of them, such as the Social Security Regulatory Authority, called after the 21 days were expired. Even then this was not followed up by the submission of a reply. • When following up on the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, phone calls were not answered; no written response was received.