A new online platform called Harare Municipality Services (HMS) that promotes better service delivery through transparency, crowd-sourced data, and reporting efficiency has been developed by concerned Harare residents.
So what is it? What does it do? HMS is a website which anyone can access. It offers residents a simple way to log a report on service delivery and water supply issues, each of which is categorised and allocated a colour. Critical to the functionality is that each report is geo-tagged, and visible on a map of Harare. The result is a real-time, accurate, resident-driven and highly visual representation of service issues, and, hopefully, council’s responses to them.
Richard Owen, a groundwater professional who was worried about the rapid depletion of groundwater, which he attributes to the failure of council to pipe water to residents, took the lead in developing the back end of the site with help from his son. He was initially spurred to create a user-generated map that reflected the state of the city’s water supply. In a recent demonstration of the tool to Harare News, he drew attention to the “Borehole Dried Up”, “Bulk Water Seller”, “Water Leak” and “Verge Watering” categories of report. “If enough users come online and report, we can draw correlations between things – it closes the gap between supposition and fact,” said Owen. “If for instance, users post numerous reports of water leaks along a section of pipe, we know that rather than repairing, that pipe needs replacing,” he explained.
Former Chair of Combined Harare Residents’ Association (CHRA) Mike Davies has had a key role to play in the final vision of HMS in that it encompasses numerous other service delivery categories to paint a complete picture of where we stand in areas such as roads, waste, and sewerage.
“In an ideal world, council would use this system to inform their work. It should help them understand and prioritise service delivery issues in a fair manner,” said Davies, highlighting the fact that a lot of service delivery such as road repairs are biased towards residents who shout the loudest, or have some strings to pull in council. “If we can get a critical mass to log reports and get council to engage, the applications for the subsequent database are fantastic” added Davies.
Whilst the tool is undeniably a good one with huge potential, the developers are not expecting it to result in a clean and orderly city overnight, but rather that it forms part of the eventual solution to the City’s woes. “We don’t expect this to result in everything being fixed,” said Davies, “but it will help towards more informed decision making – data-driven solutions rather than anecdotal stuff.”
Member of Parliament for Harare West, Jessie Majome, has taken some time to explore the tool and is very positive about its potential. “It’s brilliant and could help bridge the yawning gap between council and residents – a gap which I find occupies much of my time as an MP when I should be working on parliamentary issues,” she said. “As MP, I want an alerts function to help keep me abreast of the constituency’s issues,” added Majome.
On whether or not council will adopt this, Majome believes that they could be persuaded since modern tools are making their way into City Hall, as indicated by the Mayor taking to social media recently. “One obstacle is council’s infuriating bureaucracy,” warned Majome, “I have waited four years for confirmation of a site on which I want to build a community hall to donate to council! Getting this moved into the mainstream will require lobbying to and with critical stakeholders. Adding Shona access would also help,” Majome advised.
HMS uses the Ushahidi platform which was developed in Kenya after the 2007 election violence. Ushahidi means ‘witness’ in Swahili, and the open source platform has been used to great effect in countless situations such as after the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand, a severe snow storm in Washington DC, a wifi-signal map in India, and a map of blood donation points after the brutal mall attacks in Nairobi last year.”Building Harare Municipality Services was pretty straightforward,” says Owen, “but it will only be useful if residents participate.” With internet penetration in Zimbabwe approaching 50% as driven by the affordability of smart phones, this is not hard to imagine.
Log your report at: https://hararemunicipalityservices.crowdmap.com/
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Brilliant idea, it is better than doing nothing….I sincerely hope that this site is successful and it can make a real difference amongst all the challenges. Thank you !
This set up is an excellent idea. I wish to report only three lights along Blakiston Street from the school to Herbert Chitepo avenue are working and they are burning 24 hours a day for weeks on end.
The reason I am reporting it here is because I am having difficulty in filling all the fields on the map page.
Kindly relay this report to the municipal department.
Thank you.
To all Harare Residents,
Thanks to those who have submitted reports to the CrowdMap ..
We are planning to improve the site so that whenever a report is submitted and approved, it will automatically generate a notification email to the ward councillor and to the relevant authority (e.g. City of Harare Roads or Water departments; Catchment Councils etc.)
We hope to work closely with the authorities so that the reports coming in from the residents are brought to the attention of those tasked with maintenance and repairs.
Please keep your reports coming.
Where is the link to report BURST WATER PIPES? Half the time the
phone lines to them are not answered.
the idea was good.
Very good post. I am going through a few of these issues as well..
The City Council complains about outstanding debts!
As a rate payer of an eastern suburb, I have daily water meter readings dating back 5 years.
Each month I am charged for water which I did not consume because we never received the water. I can identify the exact date when my water “estimate” was too high and it has just kept on rising.Phone calls and letter have been ignored.
A good example in 2017 – 22 days no water, water on 27 + 28 February ’17. March 1st to date,, 13 March another 13 days – NO WATER! Only consumed 4 units in Feb. It has gone on like this for years.
There is always some excuse for why we have no water, but guess what i will still get charged for 10 units. I am not a happy rate payer! We have a service road which has not been repaired in at least 5 years. Our street lights were removed , never been replaced and the refuse collection is so erratic that I have a private refuse collector remove my rubbish.
We have to cut our own verges and according to COH the islands as well.
We have to collect all the rubbish thrown out of cars onto our road by inconsiderate travelling, litter bugs. What are we paying rates for?
What day of the week is scheduled for collection of waste on Argyle rd, Avondale? It used to be Tuesdays.
It is almost two weeks since it was last collected.
This means that by the time it is collected, the vagrants have opened the refuse bags and spread the contents haphazardly, which then get blown down the street.
The residents do their best to the leave the refuse in neatly tied bags.
Life would be easier for all concerned, including the refuse collectors if residents knew WHEN to put their bags out!
We reported toilet blockages in 1st avenue houses in Glen View 1 for the whole week and nothing has been done. What kind of service delivery is that? I think whoever is responsible for this to happen should consider that he or she is putting residents at high risk of diseases like cholera and typhoid. Please council you need to work up do business, We cannot have sewer flowing in households while you have people reporting for work everyday and moreover they are on payroll
We are so disappointed in this type of service.