My year with the government

Moving back to Pakistan from MIT to work at LUMS was a difficult decision, but nothing compared with the decision to take up a position in the government during my sabbatical year from LUMS.

In my years in Pakistan, and while living abroad, ‘government’ in Pakistan embodied everything dysfunctional, corrupt and inefficient. In fact, the first time someone mentioned the prospect of a stint in the government a couple of years ago, my instinctive reaction was “God forbid”.

How did I end up taking the position of chairman of the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), heading all public sector IT projects in the province? It started with a call on my cell phone shortly after I received the MIT TR35 award, given to the top 35 young innovators in the world.  “I am Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab,” spoke the person on the other end of the phone. “I just heard about your brilliant work and the honour and prestige you have brought for Pakistan. I would like to meet and congratulate you in person.” A little startled, I hesitantly agreed.

A couple of months later, I was finally persuaded to accept a government position. The chief minister has a steely resolve and follows up relentlessly. In my one year with the government, I have received BBM messages from him from 2 am to 6 am and at all other times. What time he actually sleeps, I have not been able to figure out.

There are many things I learned during my time with the government. Above all, I am convinced that our system, largely a remnant of the Raj, is hurting more than helping. The structure of the government, rules of business, interfaces between institutions, funding and monitoring of projects, all need a serious revamp. There is a significant disconnect between the salary, workload and responsibility of the bureaucracy. Many functions of the government need to be spun off into organisations run by specialists from the private sector.

Repeated changes in government, followed by ruthless periods of accountability, has made everyone decision-shy. No one wants to associate with a project of any significance, because of fear of targeted accountability in case of an adversarial government change. Often successful careers are built by stopping or evading a project, rather than actively contributing to something that may become successful, and hence, prone to political opposition.

The political uncertainty erodes the writ of the government. Institutional reform inevitably takes many years of sustained effort and most dysfunctional organisations have simply learned to outlive abortive political regimes. I was tasked by the chief minister to help reform and automate the Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education. While we successfully revamped the entire exam system in this last year, I have been told many times to my face that they are simply waiting for the government to change before they go back to their old habits.

My time with the government further reinforced my view that technology can indeed be a powerful enabler for reform. Even with a simple intervention like the use of smartphones for monitoring field workers, performance of government departments can be improved manifold. We coordinated the entire dengue campaign in Punjab with smartphones, used by more than 17 departments. The fieldworkers reported close to 45,000 geotagged activities to prevent the dengue epidemic in 2012. Through technology, we could track and record this stellar performance of the government.

There is a need to systematically build the capacity of second-tier political leadership. If democracy has to flourish in this country, politicians would need to be professionally more competent than both the civil and military bureaucracy. People like me would also hope that Pakistan may one day move from a constituency-based politics to one where national policy, governance and performance win elections. The volume and pace of development work in Punjab is a step in that direction.

As I look back at my year in the government, I have collected many bittersweet memories. The Metro Bus System was built in 11 months — so it can be done. Still, in my time in the government, I saw many projects delivered on unreal timelines. The set of bureaucrats and politicians that worked on key projects with the chief minister regularly worked 18-hour days, often up against onerous government processes and an unforgiving media glare. We did avert another dengue epidemic in 2012 and our smartphone-based monitoring framework is now becoming the de facto standard for monitoring in other government departments. The exam system of matriculation and intermediate students was successfully revamped. Through our anti-corruption citizen feedback model, we have reached over 1.3 million citizens and taken scores of punitive actions against reports of corruption. The Arfa Software Technology Park is now a successful enterprise, complete with one of the first full-service IT start-up incubators in Pakistan. Our IT university is up and running, with focus on research and entrepreneurship and promise to become the IIT of Pakistan.

Still, much needs to be done. We need to rethink and revamp the system, focus on governance and performance and hope for a stable, mature democratic set-up.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 31^st, 2013.