GB Government’s official website stuck in time

Nurmomad

Islamabad, November 28: The official website of the government of Gilgit – Baltistan (www.gilgitbaltistan.gov.pk) has not been updated since August 2010.

On the home page one can still see information about the late governor, Dr. Shama Khalid, and the former chief secretary. Information about the former governor and her message are also present at a separate page.

The news update section tells us about the ‘upcoming Babusar Festival’ that was cancelled in the month of August, due to destructions caused by the rains and floods.

The website also informs about settlement of “28,148 IDPs” of the Hunza Lake emergency, but is silent about the condition of thousands displaced by the floods and rains and that occurred much later. In fact, no information about impact of the flood disaster and the subsequent government response can be found on the website.

The Jobs section has been “Under Construction” since the website started.

There are also serious factual and grammatical errors in the content posted on the website. Especially, the section on “Culture and Heritage” seems to have been compiled half-heartedly, without research. No wonder it fails to give any significant insight about the region’s rich cultural heritage.

A positive feature of the website is presence of important downloadable documents, like the presidential order 2009, annual budget, rules of business, financial rules and other documents pertaining to investment potential of the region. These documents provide insights about the governance structure and economic potential of the region, which is of high interest to millions of people around the world.

One must appreciate the government for purchasing a domain and making the efforts to compile some information online. However, lack of latest updates and factual and grammatical errors tend to nullify any possible positive impact it may leave on the visitors. In many cases the website tends to misinform the readers.

The foremost objective of the GB Government website should be to share accurate information about the geography and society of its people, besides disseminating updates about government policies, projects and programs, as the case may be.

Making regular updates of the website possible would require a system within the government departments whereby information available in the public domain is sent to a central location for uploading on the web portal. A team of IT professionals, of whom there is no dearth in GB, can be put in place to convert the website into a central and credible information source for the global community.