Punjab Governance 2.0: An Insider’s Look
One year after graduating college, I moved to Lahore from my native San Francisco Bay Area. I didn’t have a set plan charted out for how I’d spend my year and half there, but thought no place would be more applicable to use B.A. in Political Economy, area focus on South Asia, than in Pakistan itself.
Difficult as the move was, and riddled with homesickness at various points throughout, it was probably the best thing I’ve ever done for myself, both personally and professionally.
I joined the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) in February 2012 as a Project Coordinator, under the leadership of Dr. Umar Saif. One of my responsibilities was helping to launch the Punjab e-Governance Exhibition 2012, which showcased to the public how the Government of Punjab used IT solutions to streamline governance and transparency. While public sector services worldwide typically tend to be inundated with red tape and bureaucracy, undertaking these initiatives in a developing country like Pakistan was an exciting step forward.
One such initiative was Citizen e-Services, which essentially digitizes marriage, death, and birth certificates to centralize them in one system to make them more secure, protect them from theft or fraud, and provide easy access to citizens for tracking and renewing their documents.
Another interesting project was the Punjab Healthline — a toll-free 24/7 helpline manned by over 150 doctors. It provided patient counseling and advice on discussing treatment with health professionals.
During the dengue outbreak, the information was channeled to help build the Dengue Information Management System — a tracking, surveillance and disease management system. It helped mitigate the crisis that dengue can create given the developing country constraints.
I am now back in the States and working in the higher education sector. My time in Pakistan was eye-opening and exciting — as I had expected. It is interesting to note that while the PITB is a government department, the organization upheld a strong culture of innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship. Since I’ve left, there have been a slew of new programs that foster a strong start-up spirit, namely Plan9, PlanX, and TechHub.
The people I met at PITB and in the Government of Punjab are incredibly smart, creative, and hardworking. They pour their blood, sweat, and tears to produce products, services, apps, and software that not only make government more open and accessible but raise the bar across the tech industry worldwide. They break barriers and stereotypes simultaneously, and I was lucky to witness this revolutionary change firsthand just as it was at its primal cusp.
This is a guest post by Alina Din.
Alina is a Program Services Coordinator at Skyline College in San Bruno, California. She is passionate about all things Pakistan, minimalism, and a good cup of strong black tea. You can follow her on Twitter.
