For years, I have argued that the government collects far more information about its citizens than it returns to them as better public services.
The National Data Strategy, launched on 20 October 2026, is the first official document I have read that treats this as a problem worth solving.
Start with the word data, because it does a great deal of work in public debate, much of it loosely defined. A statistic is a figure calculated from many records, such as a district’s population, the consumer price index, or the proportion of households living below the poverty line. Uganda has a national agency that produces official statistics.
The records behind those statistics are a different matter. They are commonly referred to as administrative data, and their purpose is what distinguishes them.
A land title is issued to establish ownership. A patient file is opened to support medical treatment. A school register is maintained to run a school. These records exist to serve particular people and institutions, and most never become figures in a published report.
That is the layer of information the new National Data Strategy seeks to govern. It also raises an important question about institutional responsibilities, particularly the respective roles of the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance and the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS).
The Ministry of ICT and National Guidance leads the country’s digital transformation agenda, while UBOS has a statutory mandate to coordinate, monitor and supervise the National Statistical System under the Uganda Bureau of Statistics Act, 1998. These responsibilities are related, but they are not identical.
Following UBOS’s public statement on 21 October, one has to ask why the bureau believes the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance has encroached on its mandate. Can the two institutions resolve their differences without turning an important national initiative into a public dispute over who is responsible for what?
Tell us once
Ask anyone who has recently applied for a licence or sought a place in a school about the most difficult part of the process. Few will mention the fee first. Many will describe the queue, the second queue and the photocopy of a document another government office has already issued.
Government often holds the information an applicant needs to provide. Yet the office serving that applicant may be unable to access records held by another institution.
Give Government credit for this much: it identified the problem three years ago. The Digital Transformation Roadmap, launched in April 2023, sets out the ambition of improving the delivery of digital public services and strengthening coordination across government.
At the heart of this ambition is the once-only principle. A citizen should provide information once, and authorised institutions should be able to use the same information where the law permits.
The problem, as the government’s own digital transformation agenda recognises, is that information remains trapped in separate systems, even within the same sector. Institutional barriers prevent public agencies from making full use of records already held elsewhere.
That is what the idea of ONE government should mean: a seamless experience for the citizen, supported by institutions that can securely and lawfully recognise one another’s records.
What it looks like
Consider a trader applying for a business licence. The trader may already have registered the business, obtained a taxpayer identification number and acquired a national identity card.
Under the strategy’s vision, the licensing officer would verify the relevant details electronically with the institutions that issued them, subject to the law and appropriate data-protection safeguards.
The trader would bring themselves, not a folder of documents that the Government already has.
Uganda has demonstrated the potential benefits of automation in public services. The Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS), for instance, has automated several of its processes.
The reported reductions in processing times for import inspections and product certification offer a useful illustration of what more efficient systems can achieve.
The specific figures, however, should be assessed against the relevant UNBS records before being treated as evidence of the strategy’s likely impact.
Need I even mention the frustration of applying for a passport or a driving permit? Better-connected systems could reduce unnecessary paperwork, repeated submissions and delays, although technology alone will not eliminate every administrative obstacle.
In education, the need for reliable information is already clear. In April 2026, the Ministry of Education and Sports, working with UNICEF Uganda, assessed secondary schools to establish their readiness for information and communication technology.
The assessment reportedly identified schools that were ICT-ready, others with limited connectivity, and those without adequate connections. The findings also highlighted a gap between access to electricity and access to the internet.
Before such an exercise, claims that schools need computers or better digital infrastructure risk remaining general observations. Reliable school-level data allows the government to identify individual institutions, establish their needs, and determine where investment should begin.
That is the value of good data: it turns broad assumptions into evidence that can guide decisions.
Good company
Other countries have already developed frameworks for improving how data is governed and used. Rwanda has pursued a National Data Revolution Policy, while Nigeria has developed national data policy initiatives through its information technology institutions.
Kenya has also advanced work on data governance, and the United Kingdom published a National Data Strategy in 2020.
The institutional arrangements differ from country to country, so these examples should not be treated as identical models.
But they point to a common challenge: governments need clear rules governing the collection, protection, sharing and use of information.
Trust is essential to making any of this work.
Uganda’s strategy must operate within the Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019, and the framework administered by the Personal Data Protection Office. Information sharing must be lawful, secure and limited to authorised purposes.
No government institution should have unrestricted access to a citizen’s personal records simply because it is part of the public service.
The Fourth National Development Plan also highlights the need to improve compliance with data protection requirements.
The reported compliance rate of 6% in the 2023/24 financial year, against a target of 30% by 2029/30, illustrates the scale of the challenge. These figures should be read alongside the plan’s underlying indicators and definitions.
A national framework for data governance is therefore overdue. But a strategy alone cannot guarantee privacy, accountability or responsible use.
Those outcomes will depend on enforcement, adequate resources and the willingness of public institutions to comply with the law.
The part that makes me despair
One thing about this development depresses me, and it has little to do with the document itself.
Uganda’s public institutions still struggle to work together. This is neither a new observation nor merely a complaint by an impatient citizen. The Fourth National Development Plan acknowledges that siloed approaches to service delivery have persisted.
Ministries guard their systems. Agencies develop databases that may duplicate information already held by other public institutions. Citizens are left to carry documents between offices because the institutions that issued them cannot reliably share the relevant information.
Against that background, it was dispiriting to see a strategy designed to promote information sharing overshadowed, within a day of its launch, by a public disagreement between two government institutions over their respective mandates.
I have read the National Data Strategy. UBOS is mentioned repeatedly, including in the discussion of the country’s institutional strengths. The bureau has an important role in data quality, statistical standards, and monitoring the country’s development performance.
That role should not be confused with a blanket claim that UBOS controls every form of administrative data held by government.
Equally, the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance must be able to explain the legal and institutional basis for the responsibilities assigned to it under the new strategy.
The question is not which institution can win a public argument. It is whether the government can establish clear responsibilities and make its systems work together.
Agencies operating in the same city and working towards the same national development goals should be able to resolve questions of mandate through consultation and the law.
Taking their differences to the media risks undermining public confidence in the very institutions expected to deliver better services.
The citizen does not care which office wins the argument. They simply want to stop carrying photocopies between government offices.
What I will be watching for
The honest test is whether the queues become shorter and public services improve.
The strategy sets out targets for 2029/30, including raising satisfaction with e-government services from 22.2% to 30%.
It also sets targets to reduce the time taken to approve building plans from three months to one month and to cut the time required to register a land title transfer from 10 working days to five.
These are the kinds of changes citizens can understand and measure. They do not need to know which committee approved a data standard or which ministry designed a digital platform.
They need to know whether they can obtain a service faster, at a reasonable cost and without unnecessary paperwork.
The strategy has identified the problem, proposed a framework and set out the work required.
What matters now is implementation, including whether Parliament appropriates the necessary funds and whether ministries, departments, agencies and local governments agree to share records in accordance with the law.
Here is what I will be watching for: the appointment of the proposed Chief Data Officer, a clear budget allocation and a published timetable showing when citizens can expect to benefit from integrated government services.
At the launch, the Minister of State for ICT and National Guidance (Information), Joyce Nabbosa Ssebugwawo, set the standard herself.
“Collecting information is not enough,” she said. “We must use it to inform policy, improve public services, support businesses, and meet the needs of our people.”
She should be held to that statement.
This one, at least, is simple.
There is a saying that if someone explains Uganda to you and you come away understanding it, they have explained it badly.
Many of our institutional arrangements have earned that reputation. Mandates overlap, several bodies claim similar responsibilities, and citizens are left at service counters trying to work out which queue they belong in.
The principle behind this strategy is different. A Ugandan should have to tell government something once. An office that needs the information should be able to obtain it from the institution that already holds it, provided the law permits that access.
Every pillar, committee, standard and shilling invested in the strategy should ultimately serve that objective.
And the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance cannot deliver it alone. The responsibility also lies with the ministries, departments, agencies and local governments that hold the records.
They must make the necessary information available to authorised institutions, adopt common standards instead of defending incompatible systems, allocate resources in their own budgets and appoint data officers with the authority to make decisions.
They must also respect the law and protect citizens against the misuse of personal information. Integration should make services easier to access without making private records easier to abuse.
The next time an applicant stands at a government counter holding a photocopy of a document issued by another arm of government, the official should ask why the applicant was required to bring it in the first place.
I will continue writing about the areas where this government falls short, and there will be plenty to scrutinise. On this issue, however, the government has identified a real problem and proposed a worthwhile direction.
For as long as I have followed public administration in Uganda, I have seen information collected about citizens and used to describe them. This is the first strategy I have read that places such emphasis on using that information to improve the services they receive.
Now the government must prove that it can turn that promise into reality.
