Abstract:
Background: Geospatial analysis identified as one of the best tools for improving decision making in donor financed healthcare projects that involve partnership with local organizations. However, for Tanzania, geospatial technology remains rare skill. The USAID and other DPs introduced GIS techniques as a way of supporting cost effectiveness allocation of resources for HIV/AIDS treatment. Planners and decision makers from different USAID HIV/AIDS implementing partners identified and trained in GIS. However, the status of adoption and use of geospatial techniques remains paradoxically unclear.
Objectives: The study aimed at examining how planners and decision makers from implementing partner organizations consider geospatial methods useful in improving resources allocation planning and decision-making. The study explored initiatives of the implementing partners to support adoption, how the users consider GIS techniques to be useful, and the challenges that experienced in the adoption and implementation.
Methods: This study employed a cross sectional descriptive design. It involved 30 training of geospatial champions from 15 organizations under the USAID HIV/AIDS programs in Dar es Salaam. Twenty eight of the respondents who were still employed in the programs were interviewed and 14 of them participated in two Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). Data analysis involved qualitative content analysis, which was based on both the literature and new emerging themes from the interviews and FGDs.
Results: Study results revealed that majority of the respondents had not successfully adopted the use of geospatial techniques in the day-to-day job activities. Most of the respondents felt that GIS was appropriate since its use made them perform professionally and could justify their resources allocation decisions. However, they found GIS to be difficult due to lack of access to software, limited skills that GIS needed including computer and ICT skills, limited support from the organizations, high cost of GIS software, and some notable inconsistences within the development of the GIS technology itself. While respondents thought GIS was useful in their job, many of them failed to sustain its use due to several challenges. The main challenges were lack of close support from the organizations, higher cost of the GIS software, limited availability of the software and hardware in the organizations, and limited skills in GIS, computer, and ICT.
Discussion: The findings consistently revealed the importance of organizational support, which employees required to make successful adoption and use of GIS. The findings show that in organizations, which provide close support and encourage employees to use the GIS technology there are more chances for successful adoption compared to those, which do not.
Conclusion: The study concluded that organizational support is very important in the adoption of useful technologies such as GIS. Even in situations where employees find a new technology useful, limited material and psychological support remains crucial.
Recommendations: The study recommended that the USAID should make the use of GIS compulsory for implementing partner organizations and provide continued support in terms of training, software, and hardware. The management of the implementing partner organizations should incorporate GIS skills as a measure of individual performance and use the available GIS champions to train the rest of the employees.
