Quest for “Digital Pakistan”

Digitizing Pakistan is the most important thing for youth, said PM Khan last week while launching “Digital Pakistan Vision”. There is nothing better than the head of the government acknowledging the need for digitization. What is perhaps even better is a young, successful, female Pakistani from the diaspora being brought in to lead the digital drive. But that’s where the feel-good factor ends and the ground realities start to surface.

To start with, what is the strategy to enhance digital access, literacy and economic use-cases for a mass-scale transformation of how things are done in the government, among the private sector and in the routine, everyday life? Unfortunately, there is none so far, with the last government’s hastily-approved Digital Pakistan Policy still making the rounds under the new government without any change.

Yes, the PTI government was busy firefighting to stabilize the macro economy, and hats off to them for doing a good job on that count under the Hafeez-Baqir duo. But a simultaneous focus on digital initiatives was entirely possible, as sector stakeholders would testify. If nothing else, the government could have just gone ahead with the main promise of its campaign-era Digital Policy: Knowledge Economy Authority.

Less than a month before heading into the 2018 elections, the PTI, in its Digital Policy, had vowed to set up a Knowledge Economy Authority that would undertake digital projects across the government and with the private sector. A funding of $2 billion over five years was promised for digital transformation in e-governance and citizen services. It was suggested that KEA would centralize all IT-related procurement and contracts across the government. That could enable local IT businesses to scale and innovate better.

The party’s digital policy had also aimed to improve the capacity in the digital economy by setting up five technology-oriented SEZs and providing them with subsidized utilities, starting three new IT universities, providing land to existing IT universities to expand their enrollment, funding 50,000 students at top Pakistani IT campuses, and encouraging science and mathematics teachers to improve skills through a certification program.

Amid question marks over those digital promises, now there is apparently a newly-founded Digital Pakistan Initiative that is to be housed at PM House. There is a lot of fanfare, and it is not nice to pop the balloons of aspirations. But the new development raises some serious questions.

For instance, under the Digital Pakistan Initiative, what will be the digitization-related roles and responsibilities of several other IT-facing ministries and organizations? Will there be a new Digital Policy coming, or will the new people run with the old PML-N document? What will be key intervention areas? Will the private sector, especially Fintech experts, have a say this time around? And what of the bureaucracy, will it be any more receptive and less frustrating to a dynamic professional from abroad?

In short, will this time be different?