The training workshop on “Accessing to information of public service”

At the end of last month, on September 29th, Open Development Cambodia organized a training workshop to raise awareness on the access to public services information using ICT tools. Being a government body dedicated to improving public service delivery, representatives of the National Committee for Sub-National Democratic Development (NCDD) were invited to share the government-led project in this workshop. ODC also collaborated with Cambodian Civil Society Partnership’s (CCSP) to target participants from Kampot and Kep provinces. As registered in the attendant list, the 18 participants are members of community volunteers as part of Cambodian Civil Society Partnership’s (CCSP) and its partners, Samaki organization, at the community level. They work as community facilitators to educate community about their role in public service, climate change and issues related to their community. This training is funded by SPIDER under a project called “Improve public service delivery through ICT tools”.

The participant are reading provided material before the workshop is started.

Before starting sharing main sessions of this training, the welcoming from ODC team is made and participants introduced themselves to the workshop. Participants were then asked to share their expectations from this full-day workshop. They hoped that after the training they would have gained knowledge and experience on public service and the use of the ICT tool, the internet know-how and how to stay safe online. Importantly, some of the participants expressed that today’s training would contribute to their role as community volunteers to better understand public services and where to find related information, as well as to enable them to share this knowledge  with the local community they work with.

Each participant was asked to introduce themselves to other participants.

The first content shared with the participants was on  “Safe Internet and Social Media Usage” by Mr. SAM AN Mardy, ODC’s Web Development Assistant for Open Development Cambodia. Some of the contents included in this session were Safe Electronic Devices Usage, Password Usage and Management, Safe Email Usage, and Safe Social Media Usage. Participants were also actively engaged simultaneously with the presentation when needed so that they could follow the steps properly. This session helps participants to learn some key online communication tools which are helpful for their work as well as allows them to have their privacy protected from any harmful activities on the internet.  

ODC team is presenting about the use of internet and its security.

This session was followed by a presentation on ‘the access to information about public service and using map on ODC’s website” by Ms. THAO Chanthearyradh, an ODC Editor-Researcher. Together with the training manual provided to participants, Thearyradh guided participants step by step through   ODC’s website; the public service information page, the database of service prices and the ODC’s  maps on public services.

ODC team is presenting about ODC website to the participants.

The participants are practicing using ODC website.

Soon after lunch, another important session took placed. It was led by the government side representatives Mr. Chet Kimchung and Mr. Samrith Vannak from the NCDD. Mr. Kimchung first started by giving an introduction about the NCDD and the ISAF project. He explained   how this government-led project implemented at the community level improves public service delivery in three sectors: health, education and commune administration. While the NCDD team provides technical support to the supply side, the five development contracted partners support the implementation on the demand side at the community level. Followed by the overview of improving public service delivery project by the government, Mr. Vannak showed the  NCDD website, putting special attention on the NCDD database system. Each function of the database was explained, with a particular focus on the I-SAF database as it also got the attention from participants because they could find their location information, such as  budget expenses and income of their communes. They were impressed by the project and the information of their own areas which were hard to find before. This presentation was very useful for their work to either share it with their community or use it as a validation source to verify provided services in their community.

NCDD team is presenting about ISAF project and NCDD website to the participants.

To end the workshop, the ODC team assigned participants into 4 groups to generate discussion around ways of introducing the  ODC website and public information page to their stakeholders. Those who gave the best presentation will be awarded with ODC T-shirts, notebooks and wristbands.

The participants are making presentation about the access to public service information on ODC website.

The participants are awarded with ODC T-shirts, notebooks and wristbands for their presentation.