IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Recently, I had the experience of having to deal with two government departments. My first experience relates to the payment of the annual token fee for vehicle registration. I went to the Islamabad GPO to pay my dues. After wandering here and there, I was informed that a person sitting in a remote corner was issuing tokens. I was given token number 393 which meant that 392 people were in queue before me to pay their dues. I stood for half an hour and then left because of the heat and waste of time.

People had been standing in the queue for two to three hours and if we assume that on average, a person spent an hour there, 393 man-hours were being wasted. If we assume that the hourly wage rate is Rs100, Rs39,300 of income of those poor people got wasted.

If web based database technology is used properly by the government, this wastage of time and energy can be minimised. If a complete database of registered cars were made, people would have the option of paying from their bank accounts as most banks nowadays are offering web based internet banking.

My second experience relates to getting a new passport. It was a horrific experience. People come to queue up as early as three am although tokens are not handed out before eight in the morning.

Is this what Pakistani people and their time is worth? I went to the passport office for three days consecutively before I got a token. It is more of a capacity planning issue than an IT issue as a good information system is being used there. The problem is that only one person is issuing token numbers to hundreds of people, only one person is there to get thumb impressions of applicants. There is no clean drinking water, only one washroom and a small hall with no air conditioner and last but not least a highly overburdened staff.

The solution is simple, a properly designed building and a statistician to calculate the number of people coming there per day and then hiring of staff according to that average.

The government is spending huge funds on e-government projects but the results cannot be seen. Ordinary citizens of Pakistan deserve better services as they pay taxes and have the right to get documents or pay their dues in a timely and dignified manner. Rocket science is not needed to achieve this target. All we need is the use of IT in a proper and well-planned manner. A pilot project can be undertaken to see how governments all over the world are delivering these services to their citizens.

Autor(en)/Author(s): Rehan H Raja

Quelle/Source: PakTribune, 18.09.2006