Transparency in governance
By Arshad H Abbasi
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=140335 
October 11- 2008
The need for good governance has emerged as the single most important precondition for sustainable development. Governance is simply the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country?s economic and social resources for development. Where governance is good, the government addresses seriously all issues of accountability, transparency, participation, openness and the rule of law. This is particularly important for development projects that aim to reduce poverty - funds are generally inadequate here so greater care is needed. The government must implement such development projects ensuring proper planning and continual monitoring for greater success.

Pakistan inherited the Audit&Accounts Department which was established in 1860 for ensuring public accountability and fiscal transparency in governmental operations. The next step was the setting up of the 1947 Prevention of Corruption Act which was further reinforced by the Pakistan Penal Code of 1960.

The main drive for ensuring transparency started in 1999 when the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was established followed by the formulation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS) in 2002. It was partly due to the NACS and the realization that transparency in procurement is essential, that the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) was established in 2002.

PPRA was endowed with the responsibility of prescribing regulations and procedures for public procurements to improve governance by devising a transparent mechanism to enhance accountability and improve the quality of public procurement of goods, works and services. Although PPRA succeeded in standardization of procurement procedures, it failed to grant right of public access to all tendering processes, even though its rules recommended this.

The Electronic Government Directorate (EGD) was created within the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology in 2002. Unfortunately, the outcome of EGD has to date only been in providing connectivity, networking, technology up-gradation and purchase of state of the computers ? largely hardware inputs have resulted without attention to the more important aspect of data openness, which is necessary for rational decision-making and monitoring of ongoing projects. Insignificant effort has gone into opening the information banks that the government departments traditionally keep closed to external inspection.

While the government has topped up with computer hardware there has been serious overruns in cost of its numerous projects, which could easily have been avoid with close scrutiny if data related to them was made public. Government data shows that the Bolan Medical College and hospital complex was estimated at Rs 70 M but ended costing ten times as much. A more expensive project of Port Qasim was to be completed at just over Rs 300 M in early 1980s but ended up costing Rs 2.4 billion by the time it was built in the mid 1990s.

Transparency International (TI) issued a report, ?Overview of Corruption in Pakistan? in early Aug 2008, where the lack of transparency was clearly underlined as a critical factor in the absence of good governance. We will mainly focus on the public procurement and management areas that the report covers. TI?s surveys have shown this lack of information to adversely affect infrastructure and public works, as they are easily affected by absence of open documentation. Public works kickbacks are estimated to constitute approximately 25% of the budget. The World Bank which provides loans, and the Auditor General of Pakistan, have pointed to governance problems which have caused lack-luster performance in projects and there have been cases of premature closure of certain projects due to this, e.g. the Balochistan Primary Education Project.

As in Karnataka, India (http://www.ksphc.in/highlights.asp ) Pakistan can use Information Communication Technologies (ICT) to help in better procurement and monitoring of public works. Web based Project Management System (WBPMS) set up there started in 2001, along with computerization of all its activities in a phased manner. The other transformation initiatives include transparency, accountability, stakeholder involvement, Right to Information, professional approach to management, etc. The transformation promotes total transparency in all its operations, and makes possible cost effective and timely delivery of quality buildings constructed innovatively to enhance the functioning of the essential public services. The transformation initiative helped it to come to grips with the myriad problems associated with increased workload and project execution in remote locations.

The transformation helps tackle the emerging issues in executing projects efficiently and in a better manner than ever before. From a computer located anywhere, the status of the projects can now be reviewed at any time by any of the stakeholders and this helps to initiate appropriate and timely intervention strategies that are necessary to improve project implementation. The system enables the project and the State to cope with the challenges of distance, time pressures, inadequate resources, lack of knowledge and skills and facilitates collaborative workflow, information sharing and good governance. When non-compliances occur or are noticed, alerts are generated either automatically or manually, and remedial measures can then be initiated and accountability fixed.

Over the 16 year period 1985-2001 (before this project) the value of work done was Indian Rs 74 M annually, with administrative cost at Rs 13 M. After the ICT projects with transparency the work done annually was over ten fold but only Rs 8 M for administration. From 2007-2012 the work expected to be worth Indian Rs 1 billion/annum. This is a phenomenal improvement.

To illustrate what can be done the author has set up a website (www.good-governance.com.pk ) that lays out all necessary project monitoring parameters for two under- construction buildings. These belong to the Pakistan Planning Commission where it intends to train project managers of key institution of the country and through this improve governance. The author is the Director of Construction of these buildings with over 200 thousand sq ft area with approved cost of nearly Rs 500 M.

Any building project of this nature involves three principal stages until the building is handed over to the end user: (a) Conception, selection of consultant, (b) Selection of contractor, and the most critical (c) Construction phase. For each of these phases, cost of different elements of the building and the processes are listed and continually updated, such as: quality parameters, timeline and milestones. The model website includes all these parameters. Putting these online was a rather simple matter requiring only a cost of Rs 6000, which was borne by the author. This simple intervention will allows stake-holders to keep track of all aspects on the project and lead to the benefits one saw in the Karnataka, and numerous better examples globally.

One would hope that having seen this model of transparency and live monitoring, the Planning Commission, which owns this project, will see the wisdom of making its all its projects also similarly transparent to start a new era of good governance. This would be the most significant success of the government?s e-governance initiative and help save billions of rupees. Our Planning Commission would also get one up on its Indian counterpart?s initiative (still on the drawing board) to do exactly this if they started immediately.
The author?s email is ahabasi@gmail.com