Power Generation Map of Pakistan and Case for Open Data
The story is not as simple as it’s been perceived. Even after ruined few more years of Pakistan’s life, the power crises mystery will remain one of the ‘Unsolved Mysteries’. There’s a ‘Rental Power’ case in Supreme Court of Pakistan, it had too much discussion in electronic and print media, debated in National Assembly of Pakistan and in Senate too many times but still worthless as there’s no logical conclusion been drawn by either of these Forums. But the fundamental question remains unanswered, whether anybody knows the Actual Power Generation Capacity of Pakistan or not?
As, we have fallen into love with information mapping from the time of 2010 floods in Pakistan, when we launched pakreport.org, a crowd sourcing platform for disaster reporting and mapping based on Ushahidi platform. And as my friend Eric at development seed says “best way to highlight big issues is through effective visual mapping of data”. We took out public data available on power generation and drew a power generation capacity map of Pakistan by plotting each power generation unit with its capacity. After a few hurdles, now this map is public and provides everyone a clear picture of power generation capacity of Pakistan.
We have made a clear picture of the electricity production capacity of the Pakistan and have opened up all the data.
The map is deployed at www.pakreport.org/whoknows
Why did we do so and what we want or what are our ultimate objectives:-
- How much power we produced. Right now, No One Knows! Once you have pertinent Information then decision makers can make ‘Effective Decisions’, as well general public trust on its Government and decisions made by the Government.
- There is no uniform place or reliable source of information to find out power generation data easily in Pakistan. It is still confusing for 180 million inhabitants’ that why on earth we are facing power shortage in the country. If we did not reveal the actual data now then we will merely waste few more years in this agony.
- We need to be transparent and honest. No one believes in the figures thrown by the people in Government or opposition to the public, as those figures have no credible source of information. So, why shouldn’t we have ‘Information Transparency’ and ‘Completeness of Information’ in Pakistan? Why not ‘open data’ and ‘access to information’ should be allowed of public organizations?
- As the web based technologies are important driver of ‘Change’ because that leads to choose organizations to become completely ‘Transparent’. Do not keep the Government data closed and inaccessible to the related fraternity. Open up the Government data that will save time of everyone. It will save time of parliamentarians, media people, civil society and millions of common people and especially the strategists/researchers who can devise the policies based on that data provided.
- Safe money and generate economic activity. We have spent millions in bringing Government entities online, but those sites do not work or have become obsolete like www.pakistan.gov.pk. Instead open up the data. Most of the time people need data from the Government entities be it entrepreneurs, researchers, students, lawyers or civil society. Open up the Government data like it is done in the US, UK and Kenya.
