SEMA - East Africa

SEMA aims to increase transparency and accountability of public services by gathering real-time citizen feedback. East Africa is talking. Which public services work best, which are expensive, and which are most effective? But citizens’ voices often do not find their way to decision makers. SEMA is experimenting with ways to make this feedback efficient, effective, and meaningful for creating actual change. In 2019, we have three different services/tools that we offer to our partners to receive citizen feedback. SEMA has introduced these solutions at more than 10 public institutions in Uganda, such as police stations, municipalities, hospitals, land- and business registry offices, and other public services. SEMA is a not-for-profit enterprise founded in The Netherlands in early 2018 and with a local office (and company limited by guarantee) in Uganda. The Netherlands is a country where government transparency is highly valued and frankness encouraged. We believe frankness and feedback are needed to improve public service delivery. SEMA’s mission is to bring public accountability to the world through innovative feedback systems. SEMA wants to create incentives for public institutions to improve. By publicly publishing our data results regularly, SEMA commends and announces the best performing institutions. Having a positive reward component will help in creating sustainable partnerships with government institutions that may want to learn to become more user-friendly and stand out. Public institutions that work with SEMA are advised by our consultants on the basis of (on-demand created) data reports and policy implications that follow from this. SEMA’s founding team is highly international and consists of Dutch, Belgian, American, and Ugandan innovators in the justice space. We value working across different cultures and take local sensitivities into account when introducing new feedback systems.