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Tuesday March 19, 2024

Umar Saif’s exit to appease opponents of transparency

By Mansoor Ahmad
November 16, 2018

LAHORE: The unceremonious exit of IT icon Umar Saif might have satisfied the ego of an influential person in the ruling elite and relieved opponents of transparency, but it is a big blow to the ongoing e-governance efforts in Punjab.

Punjab has immensely benefitted from the numerous software programmes Said introduced during his seven-year tenure at Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB). Perhaps his only fault was that he was appointed by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government.

His credentials and his achievements are a testimony to his genius. No one could find fault in his working, and according to sources, the Punjab chief minister and most of his cabinet members were keen that he continued. However, a very influential Punjab Minister wanted him out and succeeded. It would have been better had he been pursued to continue till a suitable replacement was found instead of handing over the reign of the PITB to a bureaucrat.

Saif is the most celebrated IT scientist in Pakistan and his achievements have been recognised globally. In 2010, Saif was named as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

In 2011, he was placed on MIT’s TR35 list, naming him as one of the world’s top 35 young innovators for developing a bittorrent client, BitMate, and a text message-based social network. The same year he became the first Pakistani to receive the Google’s Faculty Research Award. In April 2018, he was appointed UNESCO chair for using Information and Communication Technology for Development. Earlier in 2006, he received the Digital Inclusion Award from Microsoft Research. In 2008, he received the MIT Technovator Award.

The system programmes introduced by him have transformed the governance landscape of Punjab. The PITB has empowered the Punjab CM with a powerful IT tool to check the performance of government officials. District officers in different departments have been provided smartphones. These officials are required to provide pictorial evidence of the tasks assigned to them. A health official is required to inspect and visit three hospitals in a day; he would have to send pictorial snaps of his visit to different sections of each hospital.

In the same way, an Education EDO would have to provide similar evidence of his scheduled visits to different educational institutions in his district. Progress on development projects is monitored through a similar process.

Citizen Feedback Model is a proactive governance initiative of the government of Punjab to curb petty corruption, improve service delivery, and facilitate citizen engagement by proactively seeking feedback of their experiences while receiving day-to-day government services. The PITB under him collaborated with Punjab industries, commerce and investment departments along with labour and human resource department, Punjab Employees Social Security Institution and the World Bank to develop an Online Registration Portal to facilitate business registration process for the general public.

This has reduced the registration time from at least seven days to two days. The portal is integrated with Nadra and SECP that improved ease of doing business. Collection of stamp duty was plagued with leakages of revenue through fake and fraudulent practices. The PITB’s e-stamping system has completely revamped the stamp issuance process which once used to take at least two to three days. Now, anyone can purchase high value judicial and non-judicial stamp papers through his computer with internet connection. Name of the buyer, seller and the person through whom stamps are being purchased are entered into the system along with their CNIC numbers. This has almost doubled the stamp duty revenue for the government.

To ensure child vaccination, the PITB provided vaccinators smartphones to digitise their fieldwork and monitor the attendance and performance. The smartphones are used to enter real time immunisation records that are then sent to a centralised database. The attendance from field workers increased from 25 percent in 2014 to over 97 percent now, while the vaccination coverage increased 36 percent to 95 percent.

The quality of drugs has been ensured through automation of drug testing laboratory, medicine procurement has been automated. The health watch programme monitors attendance of the staff, availability of medicines and stock outs, reviews the overall health facility condition, and highlights the non-functional equipment.

The IT based health watch programme has improved staff attendance from 22 percent to over 90 percent. Ghost schools, teachers and doctors have been completely eliminated by programmes introduced by Saif.

Almost 70 percent of district hospitals in Punjab are fully digitalised. Details from number of occupied beds to the medicines dispensed and patients treated outdoor can be monitored in Lahore. The province has digitalised the record of all the criminals from all police stations of Punjab. There are many more achievements that were possible due to the adoption of e-governance in the province of Punjab. Umar Saif’s exit puts all of that to risk.