Transparency?

The PTI came into power with the promise of transparent governance. It is ironic that this is the one area where it has done worse after taking power. Anyone who saw what happened with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Accountability Bureau during the party’s tenure would hardly be surprised by this. Much of the commitment to transparency remains only on paper. The most crucial aspect of transparent governance in the contemporary world is the publicization of information as well as the enforcement of right to information laws. On both of these fronts, the government continues to do poorly. None of the 33 federal ministries has uploaded more than half of the information that they are supposed to make public as part of their commitments under the RTI laws. Only eight of the ministries have named a public information officer to facilitate applications filed under the RTI law, while the Pakistan Information Commission has not been provided enough information to oversee how the departments have performed on the issue of transparency.

Not only is the latest information not available, much of the information about a ministry’s structure, mission, staff, policies and manuals remains inaccessible, let alone allowing the public to understand how the said body makes decisions. For a government committed to transparency in governance, the most crucial aspect is to ensure that the public has access to how the government makes decisions. The best performing ministry remains the finance ministry, which is almost hitting 50 percent of the information it is required to disclose legally. But it would appear that these ministries are doing better due to donor obligations, not compliance with the RTI laws. The matter is not as complicated as ministries make it appear. What is needed is to hire a dedicated staff responsible for transparency. The government is responsible for providing the budget for such hires. However, it is clear that transparency is not much of a priority. It is crucial that government operates in a transparent manner. This is an obligation to citizens that it must perform in order to retain legitimacy.