Government’s first serious effort to go on-line has begun, writes Bruce Cohen
South Africa’s constitution-makers have hitched a ride on the information superhighway. This week, a large database of information relating to the deliberations of the Constitional Assembly was established on the Internet, the global electronic network.
The service will contribute to making the process of writing South Africa’s constitution “the most open and transparent in the history of democracy,” says Constitutional Assembly executive director Hassen Ebrahim.
Not only are all official documents relating to the new constitution now available on-line, but so too are the multitude of submisions made by members of the public. The database is searchable, using either topics or key words, making it easy to find information.
Members of the public can also e-mail their submissions on constitutional matters directly to the Constitutional
The Mail & Guardian tested the site this week. We found several thousand documents already archived. A search using the key word “abortion”, for example, threw up over 260 relevant documents.
This is the first real effort by government to provide free on-line information. In the USA, Canada and Europe, considerable success and cost-savings have been achieved by governments using electronic networks.
The UK government recently announced it had saved thousands of pounds in printing costs by putting the Budget on the
Recently, the South African Government Gazette was launched on-line, but this is a commercial service that has to be paid for.
The Constitutional Assembly Internet project is being co- ordinated by Julien Hofman of the University of Cape Town law faculty. “The project is very important to the assembly,” says Hofman. “The word transparency is always cropping up. Now anyone with Internet access will be able to get to any document on the database — whether it is the minutes of a committee meeting, a submission, a report …”
UCT law students are being employed part-time to capture the documents on to the database. Apart from the work of the theme committees and other official Constitutional Assembly documents, over 3 000 submissions from the public have been scanned in so far.
The project was given a kick start through the donation of a powerful Sun computer server by Vector Network Computers.
The significance of the project, says Hofman, stretches beyond the immediate concerns of the Constitutional Assembly. “This is a foretaste of what will happen in the future … this will be a model for enabling a much greater proportion of the population to become involved in the business of government.”
Hofman hopes to see the service extended to provide greater public access through the installation of computers in post offices and libraries.
“Ordinary people will then be able to find out easily what is actually happening in government. More than this, they will be able to respond and make their views known to their representatives and the various authorities.”
The Constitutional Assembly database is housed on a World Wide Web (WWW) site accessible at
Submissions to the Constitutional Assembly can be e-mailed to [email protected]