Digital literacy for all.

Byline: Sadya Siddiqui

IN the Digital Pakistan Vision launched recently, Tania Aidrus, the head of the initiative, laid out the strategic pillars of the vision, namely - infrastructure, e-governance, digital skills and training, and innovation and entrepreneurship. Keeping in line with these pillars, the Ministry of Information and Technology is set to launch 'Baytee', a mobile application that acts as a consolidated portal for women empowerment related services delivery.

There have been many such pro bono public applications launches this year by the federal and provincial institutions in their pursuance of e-governance. Take for example, the 'Mera Bacha Alert' - a mobile application rolled out by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government last month, similar to the internationally known 'Amber Alert' for the purpose of recovery of missing children in the province.

Facilitation and knowledge provision to citizens through information technology is no longer a novel phenomenon; it is a necessity in this digital day and age. However, it is one that depends on the possession of a smartphone, as do all the other citizens' applications. The underlying premise being that 'everyone' has a smartphone these days.

It is hard to ascertain the depth of the progress of the digital economy of the country when one looks at the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority's recent indicators which tell us that as of October 2019 there were 163 million cellular subscribers meaning that the telecom penetration of the country is an impressive 77pc. Of these 163m, there are an estimated 73m subscribers of 3G and 4G technology; the remaining 90m then are 2G subscribers using feature phones and non-internet basic cellphone users. That's a significant number.

Furthermore, the After Access 3.0 report (April 2019) released by LIRNE Asia, a regional ICT think tank states that Pakistani internet-enabled mobile owners are using less diverse range of applications sticking mainly to social media, voice and messaging apps, and that too at relatively low levels. It also reports that computer ownership was abysmally low at 2pc.

Adding to this conundrum, the Taking Stock: Data and Evidence on Gender Digital Equality report (March 2019) of the Japan-based United Nations University states that only 3pc of women in Pakistan are able to copy or move a file or folder on a computer. By comparison then, the statistic about nearly 30pc of poor Pakistani women that find it challenging to afford a...