Like in most other countries around the world, E-government in Pakistan has its roots deeply embedded in the public sector reforms of the 1990s. While there has been significant progress since then, it’s clear that e-government in Pakistan still has a long way to go to truly deliver on its potential. Why? The underlying infrastructure doesn’t exist, and most of the digital services offered by the government are needlessly complex and difficult to use. Whether you’re a citizen, a businessperson, or an IT consultant in Pakistan, it’s hard to deny that the government needs to step up its digital efforts in order to make better use of the resources at its disposal and improve the services it provides to the public.
History of digital government in Pakistan
At a time when technology is playing an increasingly important role, a digital government could help fill gaps in infrastructure and services. As mentioned above, connectivity is a huge problem for Pakistan. More than half of its population lives in rural areas without access to broadband connections. In other words, despite having some of the world’s fastest-growing mobile users, fixed broadband penetration rates remain low at below 1%. However, there’s tremendous potential for growth from fixed-to-mobile substitution here—and e-government could be a big part of enabling that growth.
The Electronic Government Directorate or E-Gov is the root of developing e-government in Pakistan, founded in 2002. In 2011, however, e-governance was rebranded as digital government. Following Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani’s establishment of an interagency committee to integrate ICT solutions into multiple areas of public service delivery, digital governance quickly gained traction as a central pillar of his National eGovernance Plan. In 2014 the Directorate was merged with the Pakistan Computer Bureau (PCB) to form the National Information Technology Board (NITB).
The NITB is a government organization that oversees digital technologies and aims to increase public access to technology. It’s a promising start, but much more needs to be done – only 27.5% of the population has access to the internet. The government needs to do better.
Why is e-government in Pakistan so far behind?
To understand why e-government has been so slow to take off in Pakistan, it’s essential to understand a bit about its recent history. Since 2007, Information Technology (IT) services have been governed by several different laws and acts, each of which aims to create or update some aspect of IT infrastructure within the country. The incremental update of these laws affected government IT infrastructure development and caused considerable confusion for both consumers and service providers. This confusion has influenced the adoption of digital services among potential customers; they simply don’t know where to go or what information to provide when they want to access government services online.
According to the EDGI Index, Pakistan is ranked 153 out of 193, falling behind by five places compared to 2018. The UN report presents a fragmented and siloed approach, lack of enabling telecommunication infrastructure and low affordability, digital skills gap, cyber security, data privacy and lack of trust, service design maturity, and limited citizen participation as factors responsible for Pakistan’s ineffective digital government development.
Decades of mismanagement and lack of focus on information technology (IT) has severely hampered Pakistani governments’ ability to make IT strides. While efforts have been made to develop e-governance initiatives and policies, such as taxation and public health systems, there is still a long way to go. One major issue with government services in Pakistan is that citizens need access to digital devices and reliable Internet connection, which, as I mentioned above, is lacking in many areas.
Also, e-governance is not about developing policies (for which Pakistan is making serious efforts) but ensuring that they are properly implemented and monitored. The majority of e-governance applications are written in English, even though the country’s English literacy rate is very low. Even with the growing number and popularity of e-governance applications, there is a significant lack of understanding regarding their potential and how they can benefit the masses. To conclude, eGovernment is a means to an end. It won’t create jobs, bring prosperity, or end inequality by itself. What it will do, however, is help move Pakistan from simply being a developing country to one that’s truly open for business. That alone should make eGovernment worth fighting for.
Sources:
https://publicadministration.un.org/egovkb/en-us/Data/Country-Information/id/128-Pakistan https://www.pta.gov.pk/en
