Sustainable Development Networking Programme, Pakistan: End of Project Evaluation

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched the Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) globally in 1992. SDNP Pakistan was among the first national-level projects to be launched. Created in 1993 and managed by IUCN - The World Conservation Union, Pakistan, SDNP Pakistan's stated objective was "to promote sustainable development and the implementation of Agenda 21 in Pakistan, through both facilitating access to electronic networking networks, and enhancing access to information, knowledge and expert advice of relevance to human sustainable development". In Phase 2 (October 1998 through June 2001), a second objective was added that emphasised "strengthening the capacity of organisations in Pakistan to package, access and disseminate information".

In this context, the main goal of this evaluation, described in a 58-page document, was to look to past experience to help design a viable future for SDNP Pakistan. Carried out in Pakistan in September 2001, the research comprised a series of interviews, individually and in groups of up to five, with a total of 90 staff, beneficiaries, other stakeholders, and selected senior figures in government, private sector, research institutions, and non-government organisations (NGOs).

Excerpts from the Evaluation follow:

Overall Design and Sustainability

...The SDNP in Pakistan conformed well, in both Phase 1 and Phase 2, to the overall SDNP objectives globally. This was ensured by IUCN's central role in Pakistan's National Conservation Strategy, itself seen to be in line with Agenda 21. Phase 2 refined the objectives in line with a global shift to set capacity-building alongside access as the goal.

PHASE 1: FEBRUARY 1995 - JULY 1996

• Phase 1 of the Project exceeded the expectations of many with regard to enhancing access to electronic networking. The number of active users of store-and-forward e-mail and information retrieval services (UUCP based) by the end of Phase 1 had swelled to between 15,000 and 20,000, connected to about 5,000 client nodes. The original goal had been for a total of 500 users. SDNP was at the forefront of electronic networking, and had succeeded in establishing itself up as the largest e-mail provider in Pakistan. Critically, its clients included
  many NGOs, research organisations, government bodies and UN agencies spread throughout the country, and access was provided to remote areas as well...
• Its advocacy activities were also generally acknowledged as extremely effective. SDNP in credited by senior policy makers of having been the catalyst to policies for the proliferation of electronic networking and Internet in Pakistan. Using position papers, ongoing formal and informal meetings, lectures series and publications, it gained a reputation for accurate and non-partisan advice...
• In terms of providing access to information, it created and linked up to mailing lists, newsgroups, discussion groups nationally and internationally, on issues relating to sustainable development; and disseminated several news and development publications widely. Thus an online archive of development information and networking software was created.
• Thus SDNP succeeded well in its main goals for Phase 1....Generating information, and supporting capacity building in locating, processing and disseminating information by relevant organisations, were agreed as new priorities for the next Phase.
• ...Even before the end of Phase 1, it was clear that its relatively primitive technology and basic services would soon be redundant as full Internet services became possible. During 1995 and 1996, the first ISPs [Internet Service Providers] began to open in the major cities and ISP licenses became readily available...
• At this point, the distinction between its commercial networking services and its development information and capacity building activities emerged starkly, with regard both to complementarity through the potential for cross-subsidisation, and tensions through the need to ensure commercial activities were not pursued at the expense of the development activities...

PHASE 2: OCTOBER 1998 - JUNE 2001

• With the exception of the ISP component, Phase 2 succeeded overall. The formal aims of Phase 2 on the one hand prescribed that SDNP should not compete with commercial ISPs but should rather concentrate on a niche in sustainable human development; and on the other maintained that this second UNDP grant should enable SDNP to become sustainable...
• ...the ISP strategy encountered one delay after another, pushing forward its launch date eventually until January 2000 in Islamabad, followed in June by Karachi. Delays were partly, at least in retrospect, the fault of management, and partly beyond their control... In the meantime, ISP markets had changed radically and a high price was paid for delays in failure to capitalise on its user base and reputation....Just a few months after its launch in January 2000, SDNP decided to scrap plans for Lahore and Peshawar....Today, only their e-mail and ISP services in Islamabad remain, still yielding a useful surplus.
• The ISP strategy did, however, yield significant benefits on the development side. Even in its short existence it had pioneered ISP services in remote areas, pointing the way to later commercial arrivals. Its level of service and support was much higher, building the capacity of many NGOs and other non-commercial users. It provided differential tariffs, enabling many development bodies with low spending-power to begin using the Internet and the Web. Furthermore it pioneered the use of Linux in an ISP, an open source development-friendly software, and disseminated public domain software widely. Perhaps most important, without their ISP strategy they could never have developed the skills that would enable them to become so effective in their Web-development Workshops, in hosting, in content development, and in their more recent development initiatives.
• The Phase 2 emphasis on information provision and capacity building resulted in a range of activities, grouped here broadly under capacity-building in content development, access and Internet use; and development-content generation and advocacy.
• The first included a series of Web-Authoring Workshops run from all five centres now set up by SDNP (four based in IUCN offices)....From a total of 266 individual organisations attending one or more Workshops, and 157 institutional websites were developed or improved, making available information that otherwise would simply be unobtainable. Most important, interviews established that at least some of these resulted in practical benefits for their development activities. Free Web hosting was also offered to all development-oriented organisations. Currently, these number over 90, many containing substantial bodies of information.
• SDNP centre also ran Basic Internet E-mail and Access Workshops, of shorter duration and with larger groups. These often targeted specific groups such as Women or Journalists, and many were held areas distant from cities. About 40 such sessions were held, introducing the Internet, e-mail and Web searching techniques to somewhere in the region of 2000 people.
• Capacity building was a secondary goal of the SDNP's internship programme, but the tally of 124 to date, most moving on to other employment in Pakistan, suggests that the contribution was not negligible.
• Finally, a recent innovative action under this category has been the creation of three Cyber Community Centres (CCCs), working in remote areas with local CBOs to provide Internet access and capacity building. The model emerging suggests the possibility of self-sustaining CCCs targeting specifically marginalised groups with a range of supports
• SDNP's Phase 2 activities in development-content generation and advocacy were also varied.
• The flagship is the Pakistan Development Gateway, a wide-ranging on-line source of development information from sources in Pakistan and outside. Updated daily, it is extensively annotated and contains much original material developed by SDNP. Use of about 10,000 hits per day indicates a high level of utility...
• District databases have also emerged as an innovative outcome of other activities such as Workshops. Eight have been launched with a wide range of information. Three provincial information bases (text bases) have also been developed with provincial governments, currently hosting the largest on-line repositories of official information in Pakistan. SDNP is also working with UNICEF on a more sophisticated District Management Information System (DMIS).
• [With regard to]...such innovations as CCCs, and District and Provincial Websites and the DMIS...[g]ood governance and transparency will be vital....The potential for CCCs to engage with other technologies, such as the radio, is also under exploration.
• Finally, Phase 2 also continued advocacy work. A notable success was achieved through a coalition that appealed to the government to introduce unmetered local-call access for Internet in rural areas. More important in the long run could be the Workshops, meetings and capacity building to enhance Urdu, Sindhi and other regional language on the Internet...