Caught in the interweb

I have a story today. Once upon a time (around three months ago), I was asked to come on board as a researcher for a project. The aim of the exercise was, among other things, to calibrate the e-governance index for Pakistan. Since nothing of the sort had been done here before, I nodded my head excitedly and signed the dotted line.
Then came the fun part: trying to get in touch with the country’s e-government directorate (EGD). My co-researcher and I excitedly logged on to the EGD’s website; surely this department, unlike others, should have a viable internet presence, we thought. Well, we were wrong. One need only take a look at the EGD website to see where I’m coming from on this.
Okay, we thought, maybe they had a limited budget, and decided to sacrifice aesthetics for functionality. It’s a weak excuse, but we were clutching at straws to stop ourselves from drowning in tears of disappointment. We went to the ‘contact us’ page, got the chief’s email address and shot off an email to him. Then we waited… for all of five minutes; because during that time, we had a response in our inbox: mailbox unavailable.
We then sent copies of our initial email to every email address that was listed on the webpage. Woe unto us, because the inbox of every EGD official, as listed on the EGD website, is either overflowing or unavailable. Before anyone yawns and says, “So what, that happens with almost every government department here”, please remember that the EGD is responsible for the oversight and welfare of all federal e-government projects.
We eventually managed to wrangle a meeting out of the EGD chief the old fashioned way: by sitting outside his office until we were let in. He turned out to be a good person; well-meaning, hard-working, but thoroughly unable to deal with the insidious politicking that has become the hallmark of our bureaucracy.
Part of the field research for this project also involved a perception survey, to gauge the difference between service provision and service delivery: how much did citizens concerned (entrepreneurs and business people, researchers, government officials, activists, journalists, etc) know about available e-governance services. Unsurprisingly, few people were aware of even the services that are available. There could, I reckon, be multiple reasons for this; but one has stood out most strongly. Government departments concerned have made little effort to inform the citizenry about these options. There’s also the issue of massive corruption in the placement of government ads, but that’s a tale for another day.
Major failures have also come forward in the implementation of many of our e-government projects. I’d blame short-sightedness for this. Take the example of Watan Cards that were issued last year to the flood-affected population. Watan Cards were ATM cards issued primarily to a demographic that had never dealt with ATMs before. According to the system that was put in place, PKR25,000 would be transferred into their new accounts in the first instance; PKR75,000 would be transferred later. This fact, however, was either not conveyed to them, or it wasn’t conveyed clearly enough. The card-holders went to ATMs, and stared at them blankly. Yes, no one had told them how to use these machines. In the meantime, they were accosted by ‘middlemen’ who offered to buy the cards off of them for anywhere between PKR10,000 and PKR15,000. Desperate for immediate cash, and unaware of the second instalment that was making its way to them, many handed their Watan Cards over to these conmen. The result? The section of the population that actually needed this money for rehabilitation was left back at square one.
Many other issues have come forward during the course of our research. While details and academic analyses will be provided in the report that will be released soon, I wanted to use this space to highlight some immediate facts. Open governance is essential, particularly in Pakistan, where constant military ‘interventions’ have destroyed state structures. Opacity in policy-making, despite the fact that said policies affect the general population, has led to a culture of rabid conspiracy theories which are accepted unthinkingly. Academic debate is all but dead. Instead of being accepted as part of a healthy thought process, disagreements are considered mortal injuries to one’s ego. Labels are bandied around with little thought to their actual meanings.
In such a situation, are we really surprised when a random crazy person wakes up one fine day and decides to go on a shooting spree merely because he *thinks* someone has ‘disrespected’ his faith? Governance — open, accountable governance, that is — is where it all begins, and where random madness of the sort that is personified by the likes of Mumtaz Qadri ends. Open e-governance is an easy, cost-effective stepping stone for all of this. Perhaps it is time to invest a little in the thoughtful implementation and maintenance these initiatives.

The writer is a freelance journalist and researcher based in Karachi. She can be reached via Twitter (@UroojZia) or email (contact AT uroojzia.com)