Pakistan drops down to 153rd position in UN’s E-Government Development Index

In the year 2018, Pakistan was ranked at 148 positions among 193 countries of the world and that position has now come down to 153, revealed the E-Government Development Index report 2020.

According to a survey report of the E-Government Development Index (EGDI), in the past, the UN’s index tracked the only e-government development but today, three other factors have been included to judge the e-development of any country. These three factors include; Online Service Index (OSI), Human Capital Index (HCI), and Telecommunication Infrastructure Index (TII).

The report tells in detail about the digital information development of any country including the reasons why the expected level of usage could not be achieved. The report elaborates the causes why Pakistan remained unable to adopt the digital information culture at the desirable level.

It further says that the reasons include the lack of enabling infrastructure and low affordability, digital skill gap, cyber security, data privacy and lack of trust, service design maturity, and limited citizen participation. In the report, recommendations to improve the present condition have been propounded.

Some of the recommendations include the development of a national digital government strategy, devise an action plan for the implementation of the road map, in place functional building block, establish a center of excellence for data and advanced analytics, develop a common governance framework, digital information management.

In order to address the current situation and improve its ranking in the coming years, Pakistan must revisit the present telecom policies and plans, develop public-private partnerships, offer a flexible regulatory regime to investors and businesses in telecom services, encourage innovative practices, devise clear legislations and robust standards on data privacy, adopt the citizen-centric approach and plan to achieve 100 percent digitally literate nation.