ICT Still an Alien Phenomenon for the Government

We have repeatedly written in past over the performance and inability of Government when it comes to their online presence a.k.a the official websites.

One on hand, our government isn’t a good user of ICT at all, while on other hands our officials are unable to meet the limited targets that were set by themselves long ago.

This inability of our government was factually proved in a recently published story on Pakistan Times, which cites a special audit report on Electronic Government Directorate (EGD).

Paper reveals that the audit report said the EGD prepared 46 PSDP projects costing Rs 2.5 billion. Out of which Rs 1.14 billion had been incurred up till June 2008 but achievement of the project’s intended targets such as less-paper environment in all offices of the government, centralized database of all government records, networking between each department of the government and movement of files within and outside the organization through e-services were not visible.

“Several projects were initiated, which either could not be completed or the infrastructure deployed was under-utilized. Consequently, government offices have not leveraged information and communication technology effectively,” the audit said.

You can read more details on audit report by visiting this link

The Electronic Government Directorate (EGD) was established in October 2002 to improve information access and services to citizens by usage of information technology tools and hence transparency in government-citizens interaction – which hasn’t been achieved so far.

Electronic Government Directorate (EGD) has not wasted the money only but the time as well. We could have done so much till now, if the direction had been right from day one.

We believe that the managers or the decision makers in the public sector are supposed to be trained up. They are the one who are the actual hurdle for the upbringing of ICT at the government level.

The pool of extraordinary talent available in private sector should be taken on-board with a liberty allotted to them to carry forward their work in their own way.