In the Case Studies section:
Success/Failure Case Study No.8
A Management Information System and GIS to Support Local Government in Balochistan
Case Study Author
Muhammed Usman Qazi (info@usmanqazi.com)
Application
The Balochistan Trial District Management Project, funded by UNDP, aims to support decentralisation in Balochistan Province in Pakistan. As part of this, a participatory information system (PIS) was created, consisting of a management information system with a geographic information system interface. Software used includes Oracle, Visual FoxPro, MS Office and Arc View. Hardware used includes 15 PCs, two global positioning systems, printers, a plotter, a digitiser, and an uninterruptible power supply.
Application Description
The PIS brings together data on distribution of public services with village- and household-level data. This data, once processed and output, can be used by local government decision makers to help plan, implement, manage and monitor public sector development activities at district level. The data collected from communities includes gender, educational level, occupation, vaccination, and access to schools, water, and health facilities. The GIS interface is used to present data not only to government officials, but also to communities with the intention of making them aware of community strengths, weaknesses and development potentials and priorities. The GIS itself also holds data layers on water courses, roads, settlements, forests, cultivation, power and communications infrastructure.
Application Purpose
The information system was created to address the acute lack of even basic up-to-date data in Balochistan. The system's provision of data was intended to help identify gaps and disparities (spatial and gender) in service provision. It was also developed to draw communities into the planning process; creating a sense of ownership, a sense of consensus, and a sense of transparency in the district decision-making process; and creating a sense of the community's own development potential.
Stakeholders
The four main stakeholders are: a) project staff who have designed, implemented and operated the information system; b) government decision makers at district and provincial level who use the information from the system; c) community members, including village activists/social mobilisers who gather data from communities; d) UNDP, the donor which has funded the project.
Impact: Costs and Benefits
The total direct costs for the initial three years of the project have been US$171,000: $45,000 on hardware and software; $110,000 on staff costs (IT staff and social mobilisers); and $16,000 on other costs (vehicles, stationery and communications). Following initial piloting in one sub-council in Loralai district, the PIS - and attendant District Management Information Centres - has been established across both Loralai and Kacchi district in a number of sub-councils. In terms of preliminary impact, it can be claimed that 51 defunct public service facilities including primary schools, basic health units and potable water supply schemes have been made functional as a result of presentation of MIS data to district level authorities, using the GIS map. Various development schemes have been included in the annual development plan of each district, on the recommendations of the overall Project, based on the MIS-based needs assessment. The PIS has been declared the standard and has been recommended for replication across the Province. In the immediate future, Phase Two of the project aims to replicate the PIS in all sub-councils of Loralai and Kacchi districts.
Evaluation: Failure or Success?
At present, the PIS can be evaluated as largely successful. Government staff are being trained to institutionalise the system, and so the sustainability of the system beyond Phase One of the donor project has yet to be tested. Replicability is also unclear because of the high project costs.
Enablers/Critical Success Factors
- Donor funding .
- Community participation .
- Use of GIS to present data .
Constraints/Challenges
- Senior officials . Some objected to the high costs of the MIS; in part this may relate to the decision-making culture of district government, which has been based around informal, political information rather than the formal, rational information produced by the PIS.
- Infrastructure . Lack of IT skills and lack of IT access (particularly in villages) have constrained the project.
- Future sustainability . There are three key sustainability issues for this project. First, the extent to which a more rational, objective culture of decision making can be institutionalised in government. Second, and related, the disjuncture between the low-level staff being trained to operate the information system and the high-level staff who actually make the decisions. Third, the mobility of trained staff, whose skills are easily lost if they are transferred or if they seek greener pastures for their IT skills in lucrative urban private sector jobs.
Recommendations
- Involve the beneficiaries . Any e-government project should be implemented with the active participation of the targeted beneficiaries to make it meaningful and successful.
- Change the processes as well as the data . In tandem with introduction of IT and IT-produced data, decision making processes must be changed to make them based on rational rather than political data, and that means government decision makers must change what they do.
- Develop your human resources . Human resource development in public sector organisations is vital to the sustainability of e-government projects.
Further Information
http://www.balochistan.sdnpk.org/introtdmp.htm
Case Details
Author Data Sources/Role : Documents and Interviews; No Direct Role
Outcome : Largely Successful. Reform : eAdministration (managing process performance); eSociety (developing communities).
Sector : Social Services (Local Authorities).
Region : South Asia. Start Date : 1998. Submission Date : August 2002