SDNP Pakistan
On a stifling day in May, 1993, two and a half tons of an unidentified chemical substance were found near a railway station in Karachi, Pakistan. A warehouse owner, thinking the material might be useful for something, picked it up. He and his driver died soon afterwards from inhaling toxic fumes. The local police then impounded the material, and dumped it into the already heavily polluted Lyari River.
When the story was reported in a national newspaper, it caused considerable alarm. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which had assisted the Government of Pakistan in producing a National Conservation Strategy, took the lead in highlighting the need for the safe disposal of the material. It was removed from the river and a sample of it tested under IUCN's auspices in a well-known chemistry research institute. The substance was identified as meta-dinitrobenzene, a highly toxic, potentially explosive chemical.
Neither the government nor the NGOs involved had any idea how to dispose of this material, or even how to handle it safely. So IUCN contacted its partner organisation, the Sustainable Development Network, SDNP Pakistan, which had just been established in the capital, Islamabad, to promote the use of Information Technology in support of sustainable development. SDNP's infrastructure was not yet in place, and had no direct access to either email or the Internet. All SDNP staff could do was to dial long distance to a commercial, store-and-forward Bulletin Board System (See box on technical terms, page ...) recently set up in Lahore, 250 kms from Islamabad. Their message was an SOS appeal for information and expert advice addressed to two Internet conferences, or newsgroups: en.toxics on PeaceNet and en.alerts on EcoNet, on the Association of Progressive Communications (APC) network.
The response -- both through fax and e-mail -- was overwhelming. More than 50 individuals and organisations responded to the highly technical query with concrete suggestions and offers of help. There were responses from places as diverse as Brazil and Finland, New Zealand and Switzerland, in addition to the US, the UK, and Germany. Respondents included US organisations such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the American Lung Association, the National Institute of Environmental Health and Sciences, as well as experts in related fields, students and concerned individuals, and Pakistani expatriates.
Some of these individuals searched commercial databases to retrieve useful information, while others sent comprehensive fact sheets (more than 20 pages in one instance), covering the properties of the substance, how to handle it, its known effects on human beings and possible ways of detoxification and disposal. All this information, which poured in for more than a week, was enough to compile a small book. And it provided ample guidelines for the safe incineration of the material outside the city.
A four-part partnership
This incident demonstrates why UNDP has set up a global chain of 25 national SDNPs (with activities in a total of 40 countries) as a means of helping countries fulfill the guidelines of Agenda 21 and promote sustainable development. And it equally vindicates the support that SDNP Pakistan's programme manager, IUCN, has provided in making SDNP an engine of Pakistan's National Conservation Strategy, which IUCN co-ordinates.The partnership with IUCN has been a central feature of SDNP Pakistan since its inception in 1993. "Pakistan's National Conservation Strategy seeks to transform attitudes and practices towards the environment, and influence the country to work towards sustainable development," says Dhunmai Cowasjee, head of the Communications Unit of IUCN Pakistan. "One of our ideas was that there should be freer flows of information and more -- also better -- information on development and the environment. So when UNDP first spoke about the SDNP project, IUCN was very willing to become a partner and manage the project." IUCN Pakistan receives a management fee of about 10 percent of the project budget from SDNP funds.
Ms. Cowasjee was at IUCN when the chemical dumping occurred in 1993. "We needed information to dispose of the chemical correctly," she says. "Some of the earlier suggestions would have aggravated the situation." As a result of the safe disposal of the material, IUCN was asked to prepare an emergency protocol manual for Pakistan's civil administration, using the information SDNP had gathered. And for the fledgling SDNP Pakistan, faced with the task of "waking up" the country to the benefits of Information Technologies (IT), the dumping of this noxious chemical proved to be a blessing in disguise. The crisis and its safe resolution were widely publicised in the media, and SDNP won recognition overnight.
During the initial phase of the project -- January 1993 to January 1995 -- funding in the amount of US $60,000 was channeled from UNDP directly to IUCN, as project manager. A portion of this amount was even carried over into the second phase of the project, which lasted from February, 1995 to July, 1996. During this second phase, UNDP contributed US $225,000, while an additional US $225,000 came from Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
The four-sided partnership between UNDP, SDNP, IUCN and IDRC has been remarkably fruitful. In the beginning, says IUCN's Dhunmai Cowasjee, "UNDP technically backstopped the project, while IUCN and SDNP provided the intellectual input, the 'value added.' It was IUCN that packaged, marketed and sold a vision of SDNP that brought IDRC on board."
The roles of the four partner agencies are not only clearly delineated, they are also mutually beneficial: while the three support agencies have provided the means for SDNP to fulfill its role, SDNP's activities have supported the development objectives of its partner agencies.
Paul Oquist, head of the Governance Unit at UNDP Pakistan, has been involved with SDNP since the early days. "SDNP was the pioneer in e-mail connectivity in Pakistan," he explains. "It literally played an historic role in that regard. The transparency that can come from open access to information is an important step in Pakistan's efforts to attain greater accountability in public affairs."
David Balson was Senior Programme Specialist at IDRC at the time, and had himself been a pioneer in trying to promote email and networking in support of development and research activities since the start of IDRC's Telematics Programme in the early 1980s. "At that time, most people in the North -- development professionals and donors -- thought it was inappropriate to invest development money in such a programme," he says. "But in the South, NGOs and some of the poorest countries were the most receptive to exploring the use of email in support of their activities." It seemed that the technology was seen as a means of overcoming some of the North-South inequities and building empowerment through better access to information and through the possibility of broader participation in regional and global activities.
Dhunmai Cowasjee of IUCN is also enthusiastic about the ways in which SDNP has helped support her agency's goals, such as the publication of IUCN's monthly, Urdu-language, environmental magazine on SDNP's network. "There's the original idea of information exchange between the North and South," she says, "and the ability to reach out to a much wider audience of people (including 'teachers and those interested in electronic networking), and there's the ability to influence government policy on telecommunications, resulting in a freer exchange of information and a more prominent profile for conservation issues. This project that has gone much further than we originally envisaged."
Starting from zero
When SDNP started working in Pakistan in 1993, not only were there no providers of email or Internet access, there was an underlying reason for this IT vacuum which SDNP had to address if it was to function at all. "Pakistan was lagging behind in electronic networking services," says Hasan Rizvi, National Co-ordinator of SDNP Pakistan. "The reason was the monopoly of the government-owned PTCL in data communication." During SDNP's first year of operations, an opportunity presented itself to address this problem directly.In 1993, SDNP Pakistan helped prepare a policy paper for the Information and Communication Committee of the Prime Minister's Research and Analysis wing, of which SDNP's first National Director, Isa Daudpota, and Hasan Rizvi, were members. The paper recommended the privatisation of data communications in Pakistan. "Generally in a country like Pakistan, things move slowly," says Mr. Rizvi. "But again we were lucky. The Prime Minister must have liked our argument. He was known for building highways, so when we used the metaphor 'The Information Superhighway,' it may have struck a sympathetic chord." Within a year the government opened data networking to the private sector. "That was when Pakistan made a big leap in getting Internet services. Today, there are more than 30 ISPs operating in the country."
Simple, inexpensive technology
At the beginning, with no IT infrastructure in place and all of Pakistan to work with, SDNP studied various options that would enable it to supply connectivity to the largest possible number of people. "Some of these options were rather expensive," says Mr. Rizvi, "like setting up full Internet connectivity through leased international lines, or through VSAT or terrestrial networks throughout the country." He found instead that the most economical and simplest option was to set up store-and-forward UUCP nodes in major cities of the country. Email was exchanged via a dial-up link with SDNP headquarters at UNDP in New York. This did not involve major capital outlay, nor did it require state-of-the-art technology. According to Mr. Rizvi, it involved "one or two computers and two or three phone lines and modems in our office, first in Islamabad, then in the other cities as well."He says that one of the reasons for the reliability of SDNP's services, especially in the beginning when there were no online services available in the country, was the support received from SDNP headquarters in New York. "We started off with two daily calls to send mail -- SDNP headquarters used to call us -- and later on we increased the frequency to six times a day, not only because of the volume of messages but also in order to provide faster service." All international mail addressed to Pakistan, and all mail from Pakistan to international channels, was exchanged via a single call each time. The system almost never failed. This kind of diligence earned SDNP a reputation for providing the most reliable email service in the country. "Until the end of 1996 when big ISPs came in with online Internet service, SDNP was by far the largest network in the country. Even now it is one of the biggest," says Mr. Rizvi."
A UUCP node was installed in Islamabad in March, 1994, in Karachi and Lahore in March, 1995, in Peshawar near the Afghan border in December, 1995, and in Quetta, capital of Balochistan, Pakistan's most remote and least developed province, in August, 1998. SDNP has a total staff of nine to run these four operations, with IUCN directly managing the Karachi node. By March, 1999, some 5,000 organisations and individuals around the country had email and Internet access through SDNP Pakistan, which translates to a total of 15,000 to 20,000 individual users. Even in "backward," sparsely-populated Balochistan, there are 220 links to the Quetta node.
Networks of stakeholders
During its pilot phase, SDNP came up with a blueprint for a multi-sectoral information network of key implementers of sustainable development, an idea which, given the newness of IT in Pakistan, Mr. Rizvi describes as "rather grandiose." Called the Business, Education, Research and Development Network, or BERDNET, the system was designed to provide information and access to global networks for individuals active in these and other sectors. To set up the network, SDNP conducted an information needs survey among organisations and individuals involved in sustainable development activities, some of whom were already members of the IUCN network in Pakistan. To begin with, there were nearly 30 such organisations and individuals, including environmental and other NGOs, women's groups, policy institutes, government agencies, private businesses and consultancies, who soon formed the nucleus of SDNP Pakistan's clientele. "The prerequisite was that you had to have a computer, a modem, and a telephone line," says Mr. Rizvi.The careful establishment of this network of key stakeholders proved to be far more effective than a more traditional marketing approach. "We did not market our services," says Mr. Rizvi, "but somehow these services came to be known through word of mouth. Once you have a critical mass, people just start clustering towards you." Another effective expansion tactic during this phase was to pro-actively tap into Pakistan's large number of hobbyists and enthusiasts, especially in large urban centres.
"This was the pioneering time of the Internet in Pakistan," says Mr. Rizvi. "Some people had heard of it and they were fascinated by it, so we formed a group of enthusiasts which met every week or so, and we discussed various technical matters, local conditions, how to set up Bulletin Board Systems and how to link them up. All this activity was carried on among the development sector as well." So even before the advent of the Internet in Pakistan in 1995, SDNP helped set up the first half dozen Bulletin Boards Systems, in Islamabad and other cities, whereby people could access information on a given topic, download software packages and hold on-line or email discussions. "Then we linked them all together. We had the stamp of UNDP, so people generally trusted us," he explains.
Apart from special workshops for bigger organisations, such as the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) and the Pakistan Library Association (PLA), basic training was imparted mostly at the SDNP premises. Short, customised sessions were regularly arranged for clients in weekly, hands-on sessions. To create awareness about Internet technologies among the general public, a regular weekly seminar on email and the Internet was started in March, 1994 and continued until September, 1997. It was advertised through the free "What's on" column in a local newspaper.
More advanced training was conducted almost entirely through email, including two tutorials in the use of the Internet. More than 500 people took part in the second tutorial, which took place in 1997. "These were offline tutorials," says Mr. Rizvi. "We would send daily lessons to all our subscribers. This was part of our services, and the way we provided these services was by providing access lines that people could dial into. Apart from exchanging emails, people who had subscribed to these tutorials or any of our discussion lists would get the relevant material at no extra cost."
Mr. Rizvi plans to launch direct online services in Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar by July, 1999. Until then, SDNP's services continue to be provided the old-fashioned way, by the store-and-forward UUCP system through New York; but since early 1997, instead of expensive international calls (which SDNP formerly subsidised) the exchanges with New York have been channeled through the Internet via local calls. Despite the somewhat antiquated hardware, SDNP Pakistan's customers generally find their services efficient and affordable.
"Apart from global electronic mail and offline Internet services, we have a number of mailing lists, discussion lists and offline conferences," says Mr. Rizvi. "This is an area in which SDNP is still unique among all the other service providers in the country. SDNP is the only network in Pakistan which provides a sense of community to the people who log into our servers." These people, he says, don't as a rule use SDNP as a means of surfing the Net; until July 1999 the Internet access rates of other ISPs will remain more affordable. But users of SDNP get local email services free of charge, and pay an average of US $20 a month for other services, based on the volume of messages. And on SDNP they find half a dozen discussion lists and more than 30 conferences and newsgroups on various topics, ranging from the environment and sustainable development to women's issues, education, information technology, public health, economic issues and NGOs.
"For example," says Mr. Rizvi, "Before the Beijing Conference for women, we set up a special mailing list of Pakistani organisations and individuals working on women issues for distributing daily reports from the conference". There are also news bulletins from the Islamabad Stock Exchange and a daily electronic leaflet featuring advertisements and announcements. A number of distribution lists transmit several Pakistani publications newspapers, medical journals, a wire service and various periodicals -- to the subscribers of SDNP, who can download them into their computers.
Bilal Naqeeb is a programme specialist with Strengthening Participatory Organisations (SPO). The NGO has used SDNP's services since 1993 to communicate daily with its five regional offices through a network SDNP set up for SPO in Islamabad. He points out that even at a time when many ISPs offer Internet access in Pakistan, SDNP still offers unique services to the development community. "Even when people use other service providers for their Internet accounts," says Mr. Naqeeb, "They still want to keep the SDNP account to be in touch with other development organisations."
Mr. Naqeeb has come to rely, for example, on SDNP's system of daily announcements. "SDNP collects all the announcements, news, information and the latest statistics on the economy, commerce and development, and disseminates them to all SDNP users on a daily basis. Most people are interested in this service. SDNP also provides a list which includes all the NGOs in major cities within Pakistan, which is the kind of discussion forum that is only available on SDNP."
Information is power
Since the toxic dumping crisis in 1993, SDNP and its network members have come to the rescue in a number of other instances as well, harnessing access to information and the power of networking in the service of sustainable development. "The toxic dumping issue was only the first in a series of queries that we got from various agencies, from Government, and from the NGO sector," says Mr. Rizvi.For example, when the construction of a high-voltage power station was being planned in a densely populated area of Islamabad, a member of the SDNP network, the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI, an independent public policy think-tank), supported the local community in protesting the plan, with help from SDNP, IUCN and other NGOs. Mohammed Yasin, Co-ordinator of Information and Communications at SDPI, worked with the community-members to protest the installation by the Water and Power Development Authority.
"The supreme court had invited us to be a party to the case and build evidence," says Mr. Yasin. "By that time we had joined SDNP, and we were trying to find evidence on the adverse effects of electro-magnetic radiation on human health. SDNP transmitted our message worldwide, asking for the latest evidence on this issue. They helped us to reach many people, particularly in the USA and Australia, and within 48 hours we started receiving a lot of research evidence which helped us in preparing a brief for the Supreme Court on the adverse effects of electro-magnetic radiation." In one of the country's first public interest litigation cases, the Supreme Court stopped the construction of the power station (though a final resolution is still pending). The SDPI study, more than 200 pages long, was later used in a similar case in Indonesia. "We are grateful to SDNP," says Mr. Yasin. "If it had not been for them transmitting our message worldwide, we would not have been able to gather all that evidence. Access to this technology has revolutionised our work."
Technical support from "whiz kids"
The technology may be revolutionary, but often people need technical support to make it work, and this is another area where SDNP Pakistan excels. "Even the commercial ISPs admit that SDNP has the best technical support," boasts Mr. Rizvi. The secret, for the most part, is SDNP's internship system, which complements the rather small regular SNDP staff. "This again was something innovative," he explains, "at least it probably has not been done in Pakistan on such a big scale."When SDNP Pakistan started its internship programme in 1996, they soon found a steady stream of eager young people interested in working with them. "Because of the lure of information technology, young people want to work in this field," says Mr. Rizvi. "And in general, these young kids are so good at it! So we give these whiz kids the chance to hone their skills and to support our work by providing technical support to our subscribers."
The interns work either part-time or full-time for a nominal stipend, for a period of three to six months in order to give someone else a chance. By now, intern alumni number more than 50, and they form a core of highly-trained and motivated young Pakistanis fanning out into development and IT careers. "Our internship programme has been developing human resources in an area where we don't have many experts, says Mr. Rizvi. At any given time, there are about 100 applicants hoping to fill the two to three internship slots SDNP provides at the Islamabad office.
But there is just one problem: only about ten percent of these "whiz kid" interns have been female. "This is still a male-dominated field," Mr. Rizvi concedes, although he does see a unique potential for IT to expand the horizons of many women whom tradition keeps at home. "We do have a number of women active on our network, but they are not the kind of women who live behind purdah. Still, with this technology where you can work at home, the edicts of purdah are not violated. Even women in purdah can surf the Internet without inhibition. You might say it provides wings for these women to fly into cyberspace."
Reaching the masses
A compelling image, surely. Nevertheless, the very prospect of ushering a country like Pakistan into the information age can be daunting. In 1995, Pakistan had a population of 136 million, a figure that is expected to double to 272 million by 2020.Only 38 percent of adults in Pakistan are literate, and only 16 people out of 1,000 have a telephone line, while 1.2 people out of 1,000 have a personal computer. "Even if Internet services become easily available and accessible," Hasan Rizvi concedes, "the truth is that most Pakistanis under present circumstances would not be able to use them, and would not really benefit from them."Then there is the problem of language, an issue that excludes much of the word's population from access to IT. Of the five main Pakistani languages, there is software available only in Urdu, the national language, and as yet no standard such as ASCII has been agreed upon, so one kind of Urdu software is incompatible with another. (Still, SDNP regularly publishes an Urdu newspaper on its network, in addition to IUCN's environmental magazine, also in Urdu, using a public domain Urdu reader/editor). "If we had a standard for web browsing in Urdu, that would be a big achievement," says Mr. Rizvi, pointing out that "the Internet itself is an example of the success of a standard. Once different people agree on a common standard, weird and wonderful things can be achieved."
For example, he believes there is definitely a potential for IT to be used as a literacy tool. "You can package information so attractively," he points out. "One of the fruits of the digital revolution is the unification of different kinds of information: voice, pictures, or plain text. You can teach literacy not only through plain text but through moving pictures and songs which you can play on a computer." He can also envision a day when the best teachers will be able to reach remote, undeveloped areas. 'You can connect to the recorded sessions of the best teachers in the world, which can then be shown to people in remote villages," he says.
In addition to literacy and language barriers, another problem in providing IT services to all of Pakistan is the remoteness and inadequate infrastructure of much of the country. This is why the installation of a UUCP node in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, is so significant. Even the many commercial ISPs that now exist do not serve these areas. "Now that there are more than 30 ISPs in the country, it would seem that the connectivity problem has been taken care of," says Mr. Rizvi. "But that is only partially true. Most of these ISPs have set up shop in major cities, which means that many backward or remote areas still do not have basic connectivity."
Although Balochistan is remote in terms of its terrain and infrastructure, its area is vast, comprising nearly 40 percent of Pakistan. Telephone calls from town to town in Balochistan are long distance, and prohibitively expensive. "We recently signed an agreement with the Primary Education Department of the Government of Balochistan to link up their 24 district centers through the SDNP network," says Mr. Rizvi. "Phone lines are in place, and already six out of 24 offices of the province's Primary Education Department are linked together by email. It is expected that soon each centre will have a computer and modem as well. "At least people at the helm of primary education in this remote, backward province will be connected together to exchange messages and information, which for the moment is vary difficult," says Mr. Rizvi. Internet access in Balochistan is limited for the present to the store-and-forward system, while direct Internet access must wait for the establishment of additional infrastructure in the province.
Making money
Accomplishments like introducing email to Balochistan have required careful financial planning. Early on, SDNP developed a highly effective system of charging for its services. They charged members of BERDNET no registration fee, and no monthly fee. Members simply paid a nominal amount for each international email message sent via the dial-up telephone link with SDNP headquarters in New York. Those who use only local email pay nothing at all. When nodes were established in more than one city in Pakistan, a small fee was charged for messages between cities. "Users pay for the actual amount of international or inland data they send or receive though the international channels: the kilobyte of data," says Mr. Rizvi. "The main expenditure for us is the long distance calls."Mr. Rizvi describes the financial "balancing act" SDNP Pakistan has performed. "We were trying to achieve a development objective but also wanted our operations to be sustainable," he explains. The solution was a sliding scale of rates for different customers. "Rather than confining ourselves to the so-called development sector, we opened our services to all and sundry. Our maximum rates were for the business sector, then the personal users, then the government agencies. The development agencies and the educational sector have the most concessional rates. This is an area in which SDNP Pakistan has so far achieved a dramatic success compared to any other SDNP the world over." ,p> He's right. The strategy has not only provided for SDNP during long periods between UNDP funding cycles, but it has ensured that UNDP's contribution of US $240,000 for the current funding cycle (October 1998 - September 2000) will be only about 16 percent of the total budget of US $1.28 million. The remaining 84 percent will consist of revenues SDNP has generated, and expects to continue to generate, through the services it provides. "At one point, our official funding actually ended in mid-1996, and the new phase of our project started in October 1998," says Mr. Rizvi. "During all this period we did not receive a penny of support from UNDP or any other development agency. On September 30, 1998, when we went into the new phase of our project, our profits were slightly in excess of US $600,000."
Present and future
SDNP's current phase of operations is, according to Mr. Rizvi, "rather ambitious," and involves setting up full online services in Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar in July, 1999. This means that customers will have instant access to the Internet and faster, direct email service at affordable rates. "One thing that we want to do, and that most of our users would like us to do, is to have fixed volume charges rather than having them pay per kilobyte," says Mr. Rizvi. "This means we will allow an email account which can send and receive email up to one megabyte, which is a huge amount of data, for about US $2 a month. This would take care of all their email for a month."An additional, and equally important focus of SDNP Pakistan will be to help improve the quantity and quality of information services in the country. "This involves working with key government agencies on public domain information, to help them put that information on the Net, in both English and, once the standard is developed, in Urdu," says Mr. Rizvi.
Apart from publishing statistics and surveys, government web sites would also publish laws and policies, which would then be regularly updated. Also on such web sites would be reports of various kinds, announcements, rates of taxation, and other official documents. There is even a plan for transforming some of the mountainous paper-based bureaucracy for which South Asian countries are famous. "The government is thinking about providing an electronic option for citizens, for processes that have to date been exclusively in the paper domain, such as filing tax returns, or applying for a driver's license," says Mr. Rizvi. Quite a leap from 1993, when there was no email or Internet access in the country.
These efforts are linked to a UNDP Governance project called the Government Information House (GIH), still in the blueprint phase, which is designed to put public domain information from various public agencies on the Internet. Once mechanisms for its implementation have been worked out, SDNP expects to use its experience in networking with NGOs to play a key role in promoting transparency and accountability between government and civil society. "There would be very good synergy between SDNP Pakistan and the GIH," says Mr. Rizvi.
Paul Oquist, head of the Governance Unit of UNDP Pakistan, agrees. "The governance information system will promote connectivity within government and between government and the people, as well as publishing government information," he explains. "SDNP can support this advance in transparency by providing people with information about, and access to, government and communications with government. For example, SDNP could circulate information about government programmes to the NGOs in order to get an even stronger multiplier effect."
A plan for rural telecentres
Key to SDNP Pakistan's success has been its partnership with other organisations, and it seems likely that this tradition will continue into the 21st century. Even though IT is more and more widely available in Pakistan today, thanks largely to SDNP's pioneering efforts, SDNP Pakistan still has a distinct role to play in finding ever new ways to harness these technologies in the service of sustainable development.One of SDNP's most faithful users since its inception has been SPO, Strengthening Participatory Organisations, which works intensively to empower rural Community-based Organizations (CBOs) in five provinces throughout the county. With support from CIDA, SPO provides an annual 15-week training course in development planning and management for a total of 150 men, and another course for 150 women, chosen from ten CBOs in each of the five provinces. The idea now, according to SPO Programme Specialist Bilal Naqeeb, is to set up telecentres in the remote parts of these rural areas.
"If SDNP provides the services in the small towns, then we can easily establish the telecentres," he says, barely containing his excitement. "We want to start in Punjab, where we have some good partner organisations, with literate people. The infrastructure is also there, so we can just provide the training and they can start working."
Hasan Rizvi is excited too, though cautious. "We still need to try it out," he says, "and this might take place in the next few months. SPO works with literally thousands of CBOs, all over the country. We might be able to reach out first in one of the districts and then maybe, who knows, to a wider network of such CBOs in Pakistan."
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