[UgaBYTES] Egypt tops National Telecom Regulatory Authority Websites in Africa

[Mwathi Francis]

Information and communication are necessary to ensure that national telecom
regulatory authorities can perform their responsibilities efficiently and
effectively. The laws and  regulations governing the sector must be known if
they are to be effective. Consumers need to know their rights and the
channels available for them to seek redress. If information about the sector
is available in a meaningful form it is used to evaluate performance and
highlight areas in need of improvement. If not, it can conceal failure and
impede development. Transparent information and communication practices are
an indicator of a credible regulator and attract investment in the sector.

One of the key communication channels available to a national telecom
regulatory association is its website and the recently published book ‘*NRA
Websites: Benchmarking National Telecom Regulatory Authority Websites*’ is
the first near-global effort to establish benchmarking indicators to
evaluate the websites of national regulatory agencies. Published by Learning
Initiatives for Networked Economies (LIRN.NET) it discusses in depth the
state of regulatory authority websites in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin
America and North America and an annex provides a one page snapshot of the
websites of the websites of 93 telecom regulatory authorities.

*'Benchmark Indicators for African National Telecom Regulatory Authority
Websites'* was published as a chapter in the book 'Benchmarking National
Telecom Regulatory Authority in which the NTRA website of Egypt scored the
highest ranking in Africa and is assessed to be almost fully at the
interactive level, as it scored 2.48 points, according to the report. Each
website was assessed across different categories of information provision.
To achieve a consistent ranking, each element was given a score of 1 to 4
based on the degree of richness. The Egyptian NTRA, had an overall average
score of the highest benchmark across all subcategories with several of the
subcategories benchmarked as interactive (score of 3) – having most of the
items linked, forms in PDF or online, downloadable and hyperlinked to
relevant legislation. Egyptian NRA not only made clear choices of ensuring
that each subcategory provided adequate information but also in addition
ensured that items such as regulations and forms for each category were
linked there.

Nigeria, Mauritius Kenya and South Africa were also benchmarked as providing
and enhanced level of information via their NRA websites. Following closely
were Uganda, Algeria, Senegal and Tanzania. Together, these NRA websites
were considered to have had adequate content that allowed the user to make
informed decisions. The content in most of the categories was available via
downloads. As for the Egyptian website, these had most of their functional
categories clearly organised for the user. In contrast, they significantly
differed from Egypt in the interactivity of the content such as less
hyper-linked content to relevant legislation and lack of variety of forms
available.

Read on<http://telecentrecommunity.ning.com/profiles/blogs/egypt-tops-national-telecom>
-- 
Watch out for the 'telecentre.org Idol 2010'. More details on
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Francis Mwathi
Support Community Facilitator
UgaBYTES Initiatives (www.ugabytes.org)
Telecentr.org (www.telecentrecommunity.ning.com)
Tel: +256 414 370163
Mob: +256 783 010269
Skype: francis.mwathi
E-Mail: mfrancis at ugabytes.org
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