Technology, government and us

In the use of technology for delivering a more engaged form of govt, there is much we can learn from global innovation

Technology has changed the world beyond recognition for most of us who are over 30 years old. Communication and collaboration have become instantaneous and effortless. Feedback is immediate. The average citizen today has access to a repository of data far exceeding in size or scope anything seen before. Where once influence was the preserve of those with wealth and power, social media tools now allow those with creativity and talent to build up, speak to and influence an audience of millions if not billions, that too at very little cost. And yet in this fundamentally changed world, the way our government works and engages with people has not really changed. There is an urgent need for the government to use technology to better engage with the public.

Gavin Newsom, lieutenant governor of California, has written a fascinating book on this subject. Two aspects of technology allow us to do away with our exclusive reliance upon the government to solve our problems. The first is that all communication networks today are two-way. Those at the bottom can communicate to those at the top. And those at the bottom can communicate with other peers, without going through a central gatekeeper. Secondly, data is not centrally held, but rather distributed in the cloud, therefore, democratising access to it. Since information is power, power is democratised. Problems can be solved by the people themselves because technology allows people and organisations to collaborate effectively.

This, of course, does not imply that there is no need to govern. On the contrary, government is needed to provide platforms that allow people outside government to take a crack at problem-solving. Allow people to solve problems rather than just complain about them. To understand the power of platforms, one need look no further than Apple’s iPhone. Apple’s true genius with the iPhone was in allowing it to serve as a platform that millions of people could use to provide entertainment and functionality through mobile applications. The vast majority of apps on the App Store are not developed by Apple itself. Apple is full of smart people, but the company knows that content generated by individuals outside the company drawn from a pool of hundreds of millions will be far more relevant than what its best employees can come up with.

In order to be a facilitator, the government can start by opening up access to that massive black hole of data that it holds. This is public data, the property of every citizen. There is data about healthcare, electricity billing and usage, crop sizes and yields, vehicle registrations, land ownership, procurement, imports, exports, etc. Not only should this data be put out on the cloud, so that the public can access it (subject to limitations of course) but it must be in a form that is uniform and easily readable. Once the data is public, people will find the most unexpected and smart ways to put it to use.

Take the example of PIMS, supposedly our national hospital. Thousands of unfortunate patients from all around the country are registered to receive medical care there. There is a lot of associated, very valuable data. Couple this with technology and you can vastly improve service at the hospital and improve healthcare standards in our community. Text messages can remind patients about vaccination dates and feedback systems allow patients to anonymously rate the medical care they have just received. This data is then made publicly available to keep doctors on top of their game.

Look at the power sector. The challenges of fixing the transmission and distribution aspects are formidable, perhaps too formidable for our government. So why not let our best and brightest take a crack at it? Smart metres allow for the collection of usage data at a very granular level. In other countries, such data has allowed entrepreneurs to provide distributed power solutions that intimately match the needs of consumers. There is no reason why this can’t be done in Pakistan.

Pakistan may be a nuclear power but conducting a population census seems to be beyond our governments. Why not use our network of around 140 million cell phone connections to facilitate this process? Other countries have offered monetary rewards for participation in a census. If the government was to offer, through cellular operators, a Rs500 air time credit for participation in a population census (subject to terms and conditions) would this provide the incentive for people to take part? And how would the cost of such a scheme compare with the traditional method?

Our government should use technology to make it easier to vote. Each biometrically verified mobile phone and connection is potentially a polling booth. Despite local governments being the essence of democracy, the Election Commission of Pakistan and the provincial governments can’t decide how best to hold local polls. Once again, why rely on the government alone to solve the problem? Mr Newsom suggests holding a prize competition for designing a better voting system in the US. Why doesn’t our government do this first? With public participation diminishing in each subsequent election, clearly there is a need to experiment to find a better system.

And on the subject of better systems, are the residents of Islamabad happy with their local governance? The capital’s residents are literate and there is a high level of mobile and internet penetration. Shouldn’t the office of the chairman of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) have a Facebook/Twitter account to facilitate two-way communication between residents and the administration? Have the residents of the capital ever been asked for their input on anything? We pay property tax to the CDA, but the CDA director decides how that money is spent. Why not open this question to neighbourhood-wide voting, on an easy-to-use City of Islamabad website? Why not use technology to introduce participatory budgeting, where voters get to decide how discretionary funds are used?

Clearly, there continues to be a need for centralised decision-making in government. Minority rights need to be protected from the tyranny of the majority. It is very easy to dismiss some of these proposals as foreign ideas not suited to our soil. But in the use of technology for delivering a more engaged form of government, there is much we can learn from global innovation and best practice.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27^th,  2015.

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