submitted by Douglas A Musunga. This discussion generated 47 responses.

"Am wondering if the person that designed the application for receiving PLE Results on phone is on this Forum.Though it is mainly useful at a particular time of the year i think its a great innovation. So to Who ever came up with the Concept Kudos To you.

people are so excited about the the whole concept, many were pessimistic about it but it has turned out great. Back in the day when we did our PLE if you wanted to know your results fast, you had to know some one in UNEB and that is now History."

Key points arising from this discussion:

1. what is the policy on Privacy of Information in Uganda. How private should Examination results be?

2. Is the cost for text messages affordable especially for parents who do not own mobile phones

3. No one is forcing anyone to use the service, the cost benefit analysis for the users will determine service uptake. If the service is badly priced no one will buy.

4. This is already much more efficient than in the old days. And much cheaper.

5. For now, a private company just took the liberty of developing an SMS application on top of the dataset (which is perfectly fine with me). However, the complete dataset, should be available to the people who paid for it, which is you and me, the taxpayers. I think this is what Tim Berners-Lee was referring to as Open data in his speech here.

6. Once the dataset is open, we could all build cool applications with it (like, nice maps with results/school results/district etc). And this SMS application could be one of them, for people who are not yet surfing the web (on their phones).

7. Examination results is public knowledge just like admissions and intakes of schools and tertiary institutions. You have a right not to tell me your child's results, but you don't have a right to stop MoES, UNEB, NewVision or Bukedde from publishing those results. SMS media is just another media that publishes these results. You can only challenge them if what they have published is inaccurate.

8. I am curious on the loads that this nice offering has brought to the content provider's systems and how they are fairing with it. In Kenya where a similar system was launched, there were issues where large SMS quantities rendered the service inaccessible for several hours and in some instances people never got replies even after the premium rated deduction of their credit.

9. What we should be worried of is the integrity of the results/system.

10. The general public can now clearly and immediately see the impact ICTs can have on their lives. As well as being able to view one's water bill, by just sending an SMS this is another great idea. Kudos to UNEB and all the other stake holders. Some of the other great innovations that really excited me in the past, include Zain's One network and recently Warid's Pakalast. We need more of these innovations and creativity in service delivery. Way to go!

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Related links and information
How the PLE results application work (SMS Media)

UNEB (opens external link)

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