ICT4Statebuilding: Governance out of a Box

Implementing sustainable peace necessitates a functional public administration that is able to provide basic services to citizens and rebuild the social contract between citizens and the state.

CMI's ICT4Statebuilding program identifies and tests ICT solutions that can be used to support the rebuilding of a functioning public administration in the post-conflict phase. The program also develops analytical tools for planning, evaluating, and acquiring suitable ICT-based solutions.

The first project launched under this program is Governance out of a Box in Liberia.

Mobile Birth Registration in Liberia

A functional state apparatus and administration are key components of peace and development. The state administrations in post-war countries face enormous pressure to deliver basic services while their work is being slowed down by lack of resources and weak access to effective solutions for planning and implementation.

The civil war in Liberia ended in 2003 with the signing of the Accra Peace Agreement. The treaty recognized the need to reform and to make the governance of Liberia more inclusive. CMI has worked in Liberia since 2009 to contribute to the efforts of the Liberian state administration in implementing peace.

CMI works with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MoHSW) and the Universal Birth Registration Task Force of Liberia to re-establish a decentralized system of data collection and entry for birth registration. CMI contributes to the program through Mobile Birth Registration, a solution that complements the traditional paper-based birth registration and helps build a central database of births and birth certificates. The collected data on births serves also as a basis for a more comprehensive civil registry in Liberia. The technology partner in the project is Nokia.

The solution is based on a smartphone application capable of receiving registration surveys sent from a central server. These surveys are then filled by District Health Officers that work in the various counties of Liberia and the data is stored in a central database in the capital city, Monrovia.

Using mobile technology instead of the traditional paper-based method further speeds up the birth registration process, enhances data accuracy and security, and facilitates access to and dissemination of data among relevant state authorities who need it for planning and resourcing basic service delivery. A case study on the solution submitted to the ICMB 2010 in Athens can be found here.

Under the GooB project CMI also tries to bring together the various actors in Liberia that are working on registration process and facilitates collaboration between them. Collaboration is crucial in creating interoperable registries and in avoiding duplicate or overlapping registration mechanisms.