eNews | 18 October 2010 | Visit our website at www.ansa-eap.net
checkmyschool.org
The quality of local service delivery influences poverty reduction and sustainable development directly in most East Asia-Pacific countries. Service delivery systems are efficient if they are people-centered, have clear standards, are fair and accountable, and follow good practices.
By mainstreaming the social accountability (SAc) approach, ANSA-East Asia Pacific seeks to intensify the connection between service delivery and good governance.
Among its latest initiatives is checkmyschool.org,an interactive Global Positioning System (GPS) map of basic information on the Philippine public education system. It tells us about the condition of the education sector as well as the services and facilities being provided to public schools.
The initiative is done in partnership with the Philippine Government’s Department of Education and Google. checkmyschool.org takes advantage of information and communication technology to promote transparency and social accountability in governance.
By simply clicking on a particular school on the GPS map, citizens can obtain information about specific aspects of school performance—including number of teachers, condition of facilities, student achievements, status of nutritional health programs, and more.
The information is fed into the geo-referencing database by local school monitors who send in real-time data via their cell phones using SMS text messaging. Some 8,000 public schools in the Philippines are currently on the site, and the number is expected to grow quickly in the coming months.
ANSA-East Asia Pacific will use the Philippine initiative as a model for other countries. It has already made a presentation of the concept to the Mongolian Ministry of Education.
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