Page 46 - U4SSC Factsheet, Bizerte, Tunisia, June 2020

One of the regions in which the project will be implemented is the Bizerte Governorate, where the
rehabilitation of agricultural irrigation infrastructure will result in a reduction of water loss and ensure
consistent water delivery. This increase in water security will increase the volume and value of planted
crops. Support in identifying and accessing higher-value crops, as well as markets, will be offered to
farmers in order to help them realize high yields. Investment will be made, in order to attract further
private investment through matching grants schemes, and in post-harvest infrastructure, which will
also increase the value of the area's agricultural production.

Aside from the obvious benefits of water conservation – the development of rural markets, infrastructure
and service delivery around the City of Bizerte, and job creation for the region's youth and women –
the project will also result in improved food security for the City of Bizerte and its surrounding areas.

Citizen Participation via ICTs

An early World Bank co-funded pilot project in the post-2010 Tunisian era focused on citizen engagement
in the accessibility and quality of healthcare in their cities. Co-funded in part by the Korean Trust Fund,
various ICT specialists worked with the Ministry of Health in Tunisia to develop and test a new citizen
feedback system in hospitals using two types of ICT software: LimeSurvey, which is an open- source
tool to create online surveys; and JasperSoft, which is a business intelligence platform used to analyse
data collected from a variety of sources.

One of the hospitals chosen was in the semi-rural vicinity of the City of Bizerte. The project’s aim was
to make the provision and collection of feedback as easy as possible in the pilot hospitals. It included
the development of a mobile and tablet-friendly version of the application that allowed hospital staff
to elicit and record patient feedback in Arabic and French from any location. In addition, interactive
kiosks were installed in the hospital's lobby to enable citizens to provide their feedback independently
at any time. The results were then uploaded to a secure website that could be accessed by hospitals
and Ministry of Health project managers. This pilot project allowed for automated survey response
analysis that included aggregated totals and visual results. It made collecting feedback from thousands
of citizens quick, tech friendly and inexpensive. The successful pilot is exactly the type of SSC-relevant
initiative that can be introduced or replicated in hospitals across Tunisia.

Waste Management

MedCities joined the Waste Prevention and Management Section of the Barcelona Metropolitan
Area (AMB) in implementing a project to improve waste management in two Tunisian municipalities,
one of which is Bizerte. The project aims to strengthen the capacities and role of Tunisia's local city
governments in waste management and the health of the urban environment, and is based on the
work to define the strategic lines carried out by the Municipal Plans of Management of Waste (PCGD),
and developed in 2010 by GiZ (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, which is a German
development agency that provides services in international development cooperation).

Bizerte's project is meant to serve as an effective territorial planning tool for all the other similar
future municipal interventions in Tunisia. It also seeks to empower citizens with knowledge on the key

40 U4SSC Factsheet | Bizerte, Tunisia | June 2020