PAKISTAN`S Planning Commission is the apex body that formulates plans for large national projects. It oversees their implementation by other institutions and agencies.

Its failure to provide wise planning and careful monitoring, backed by transparency, has led to an enormous waste of funds and neglect of areas which today are the cause of unrest.

Given the current institutional weakness, the short-term solution is a good web-based monitoring system for all development projects with open access for all. With the revival of the judiciary, such openness will encourage the public to become effective watchdogs allowing redress by the courts when needed.

The complexity of the Commission`s task may be assessed by visiting the public development projects page on its website. These projects range in cost and are dispersed countrywide. While monitoring of specific projects may be possible by a large competent staff, the Commission in its present form and current mode of operation fails to assess holistically the complete portfolio of projects. Funds used for setting up a monitoring mechanism have been largely wasted Rs131m used in 2006-07 for refurbishing rented property to house this unit and then Rs360m allocated for instituting the office with nothing substantive to show for it.

Lack of enlightened leadership and poor competence overall but particularly in information technology (IT) tools and modern management techniques have led to the Commission`s poor performance. Another equally important reason for this is the neglect of the real needs of ordinary people who are the main stakeholders. There is also no mechanism for obtaining feedback from them during the project`s implementation.

Our planners may find western models of project planning and management expensive or too complicated for use here partly due to inadequately trained staff. Let`s locate successful models in the south. Where better to look than in India and Sri Lanka!

In 2001 the Karnataka Police Housing Corporation`s (http//www.ksphc.in/index.asp) new management with the help of IT experts conceived a plan to set up a web-based project monitoring system (WBPMS). The trial version was working in six months. Currently, the WBPMS encompasses over 2,000 project sites in 200 different locations in the state. This now mature system can keep tabs on even more projects, with roughly one to three per cent of the cost of each project being deployed for its management. This is small compared with the overall savings that accrue from such management.

Within two years of starting, e-tendering — a totally transparent mode of award of contract — became part of the system. Being ISO-certified the WBPMS and e-tendering are offered as paid service to other clients. The project is now posting a net profit only because of the WBPMS, which makes possible cost-effective and timely delivery of quality buildings.

Here are numbers to back the above claims. From 1985-2001, before the use of IT, the value of work done was Indian Rs74m annually, with administrative costs at Rs13m. After the use of IT , the annual work was more than ten-fold but expenditure on administration was only Rs8m.

A very rudimentary model of the Indian system was set up by Mr Arshad Abbasi on the web in mid-2008. He was then the director of construction at the Planning Commission and charged with constructing a large training institute for the Commission. He declined a request to transfer the construction contract arbitrarily from an approved building contractor to an unapproved one. He then set up the data for the institute on his own website.

Following this, he wrote a letter to the deputy chairman requesting that all projects of the Commission be made transparent and that their evolving data be made available on a website. In case his advice about across-the-board transparency was not accepted, he said, he would resign. He also wrote that he was unwilling to sanction an illegal transfer to an unapproved contractor. Within six weeks his resignation was accepted and he remains without a job. An honest man pushing for transparency now sits at home.

The Sri Lanka Ministry of Plan Implementation (www.mpi.gov.lk/nor) works on a countrywide level and is thus bigger in scope than the Karnataka project, though the methodology and implementation are similar. This keeps track of all foreign-funded development projects and programmes implemented by the government and helps to provide timely information for policymakers to improve accountability, transparency and good governance.

The system is updated online by project directors on a monthly basis. As a user-friendly system, it captures information related to financial progress, physical progress, results, key issues and constraints in the implementation of projects and thereby helps to expedite project implementation. Its 12 modules include `project profile, `project log frame`, `monthly financial report`, `activity monitoring report`, `cash flow requirement`, `monthly reimbursable foreign aid`, `loan covenant, `procurement monitoring`, `report on major issues`, `component-wise financial progress`, `project review report` and `public comment`.

Had our Planning Commission the will to reform itself, it would have done so by now. It is not that it is unaware of successful models in the south. But now that we have successfully begged for funds from the IMF, it is important that the IMF insists on the use of WBPMS by the Commission.

According to the adviser to the prime minister on finance, Shaukat Tarin, the country will seek $10bn more over the next three years from the Friends of Democratic Pakistan group. The shiny begging bowl is being prepared for the meeting of this group in Tokyo later this month. And then there is the $1.5bn annually for five years promised by the US government.

This large inflow of funds will attract the sharks keen to take a big bite. These come in the shape of highly paid foreign consultants of donor/lending countries, expatriate Pakistanis and national consultants and firms out to make a killing. Much of this old-fashioned way of draining valuable funds can be avoided very easily by implementing the systems shown to be so successful by regional countries. One hopes that for once President Obama`s government and donors/lenders insist that our planning and monitoring be honest and transparent through the effective use of the web.

The writer is an Islamabad-based physicist and environmentalist.