Pakistan inherited the Audit and Accounts Department which was established in 1860 for ensuring public accountability and fiscal transparency in government operations. The next step was the setting up of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947, which was further reinforced by the Pakistan Penal Code of 1960. The main drive for ensuring transparency started in 1999 when the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was established, followed by the formulation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS) in 2002. It was partly due to the NACS, and the realisation that transparency in procurement is essential, that the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) was established in 2002.
PPRA was endowed with the responsibility of prescribing regulations and procedures for public procurements to improve governance by devising a transparent mechanism to enhance accountability and improve the quality of public procurement of goods, works and services. Although PPRA succeeded in standardization of procurement procedures, it failed to grant the right of public access to all tendering processes, even though its rules recommended this.
The Electronic Government Directorate (EGD) was created within the ministry of information and communication technology in 2002. Unfortunately, the EGD's has so far only been in the provision of connectivity, networking, technology upgrading and purchase of state-of-the-art computers. Largely, hardware inputs have resulted without attention to the more important aspect of data openness, which is necessary for rational decision-making and monitoring of ongoing projects. Insignificant effort has gone into opening the information banks that the government departments traditionally keep closed to external inspection.
While the government has topped up with computer hardware, there has been serious overruns in the cost of its numerous projects, which could easily have been avoided with close scrutiny if data related to them was made public. Government data shows that the Bolan Medical College and Hospital complex was estimated at Rs70 million but ended up costing ten times as much. A more expensive project of Port Qasim was to be completed at just over Rs300 million in early 1980s but ended up costing Rs2.4 billion by the time it was built in the mid-1990s.
A report issued by Transparency International (TI) in early August, titled "Overview of Corruption in Pakistan," clearly underlined lack of transparency as a critical factor in the absence of good governance. IT's surveys have shown this lack of information to adversely affect infrastructure and public works, as they are easily affected by absence of open documentation.
Nevertheless, Pakistan as made tremendous progress in the telecom sector, and that could be used as a tool to improve governance. Use of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) in governance all over the world showed exception improvement in delivery of service, building trust and confidence of its citizens. As in Karnataka, India (http://www.ksphc.in/highlights.asp) Pakistan can use information communication technologies (ICT) to help in better procurement and monitoring of public works. The web-based project management system (WBPMS) set up there started in 2001, along with computerisation of all its activities in a phased manner. The other transformation initiatives include transparency, accountability, stakeholder involvement, right to information and professional approach to management. The transformation promotes total transparency in all its operations, and makes possible cost-effective and timely delivery of quality buildings constructed innovatively to enhance the functioning of the essential public services.
The transformation helps tackle the emerging issues in executing projects efficiently and in a better manner than ever before. From a computer located anywhere, the status of the projects can now be reviewed at any time by any of the stakeholders, and this helps to initiate appropriate and timely intervention strategies that are necessary to improve project implementation.
Between 1985 and 2001, before the use of ICT, the value of work done was Indian Rs74 million annually, with administrative cost at Rs13 million. After the use of ICT, the annual volume of work was more than tenfold but expenditure on administration was only Rs 8 million.
I have developed a website (www.good-governance.com.pk) that lays out all necessary project monitoring parameters for two under-construction buildings. These belong to the Pakistan Planning Commission where it intends to train project managers of key institution of the country and through this improve governance. The writer is the Director of Construction of these buildings with an area of over 200,000 sq ft, with the approved cost of nearly Rs500 million.
Any development project of this nature involves three principal stages until the building is handed over to the end user: (a) conception, selection of consultant; (b) selection of contractor; and, the most critical, (c) the construction phase. For each of these phases, cost of different elements of the building and the processes are listed and continually updated, such as quality parameters, timeline and milestones. The model website includes all these parameters. Putting these online was a rather simple matter requiring only a cost of Rs6,000, which was borne by me. This simple intervention will allows stakeholders to keep track of all aspects on the project and lead to the benefits one saw in the Karnataka and numerous better examples globally.
One would hope that having seen this model of transparency and live monitoring, the Planning Commission, which owns this project, will see the wisdom of making all its development projects similarly transparent. This would be the most significant success of the government's e-governance initiative and help save billions of rupees.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Arshad H Abbasi
Quelle/Source: The News International, 11.10.2008
