e-Tegeko: A system that will boost citizens' participation on parliamentary regulations in Rwanda

Abstract

In democratic countries, members of the parliament make draft-laws, bills and amend laws for the country and people to obey. In this paper, with Rwanda taken as a case study, we conducted a research on 61 individuals from rural and urban areas. The findings were that the citizen's participation in the law making is very low; as citizen have to write letters and take them to the parliament in case there is a law change or as a way to give an opinion about any draft-law or a bill. Taking a long time to read those letters and gather data. Another problem is also a lack of information about current laws. Information Communication Technologies (ICT); infrastructures in place, such as, internet penetration rate, mobile phone penetration rate, telecommunication coverage area should be considered when proposing a solution to improve. “e-Tegeko” is the proposed solution to that problem. Its purpose is to boost the citizen's participation in the law making using smartphones and computers. All expected functions and benefits are illustrated.