The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
By Julius Businge
The Minister of Information and Communications Technology, John Nasasira has urged government spokespersons for different agencies to utilize social media as a means of communicating government programmes. The minister made the remarks in a speech at a one-day social media workshop of over 100 government spokespersons organized by the National IT Authority, National Information Technology Authority Uganda in Kampala on March 24.
The workshop was timely. At the end of 2014, President Yoweri Museveni issued two directives to all government ministries, agencies and departments–improve quality and security of government websites and communicate government achievements. The minister said a good number of innervations have been made towards addressing the presidential directive. Key to this is the ongoing capacity building of government web managers, improvement of government websites and utilization of the weekly government airtime from all media houses, he said.
He added that the social media workshop came handy in realizing the same. Under estimating the strength of this new media of communication is not only inappropriate but risky, he said, adding information flow seems faster with no boundaries. In a speech, the Executive Director for NITA-U, James Saaka said, social media stands out to be a very simple tool of passing out government messages because it has become popular in Uganda and more importantly, covers a big population in the shortest time possible.
