In UN E-Government Development Index, Pakistan was ranked 153rd out of the total 193 countries, dropping from its previous rank of 148th.
Before the indicator only tracked the E development but now it has three more indicator that are considered, Human Capital Index, Online services Index and Telecommunication Infrastructure Index.
From the added indicators in the EGDI, it gives a deeper and closer look into the digital transformation of the country’s E-Govt. through the use of these, technology will be enhanced to improve the rank for future and experience of the public with the Government will be known.
Pakistan can also learn from experiences of other countries with different technologies to improve their own technology. Isolated and fragmented approach, cyber security, lack of skills, lack of digital skills, data privacy, lack of enabling Telecommunication infrastructure and low affordability, lack of citizen participation and maturity of service design are the reasons of weak digital government of Pakistan.
The strategies to develop the Government, implementation of road map plan should be made, centralized cross government IT support, digital infrastructure, in place fundamental building blocks i.e. digital identity, payment, data exchange platform, establish center of excellence for data and advanced analytics, develop common governance framework i.e. portfolio, program and project assurance framework, digital information management, procurement and etc.
The report to improve the E-governance suggests that the standard of digital services to be maintained across services in quality wise and should have consistency, national citizen participation should be increased, mindset and organizational structure should be transformed, user-friendly online participatory platform should be developed and launched, digital tools, to increase public participation incentives should be given, develop a better engagement strategy to show increased participation of citizens and the impact all it will have.
The report further added, investors and businesses in telecom should be given better and flexible regulatory regime, to look at current telecom policies, private-public partnerships should be developed, innovative practices and work towards data driven policies should be developed, comprehensive national digital literacy policy, good education policy that will work for years and similar polices that will create hundred percent digital literate nation and empower he marginalized population such as women, poor, and minorities. Awareness campaigns should be launched which will create digital awareness and training programs to train the public for making them digitally literate. Skills of government employees should also be in priority, their skills should be developed, data protection and cyber security should be given high importance as with nation becoming digital, the data becomes very sensitive to bugs and hackers which should be prioritized as well. A consistent system should be designed at federal and provincial level consisting of methodologies, tools, templates, branding elements, guidelines and principles.
