Unlikely E-Government Plan for Closed-off Turkmenistan

The government in Turkmenistan has unveiled plans to promote e-government as a way of improving communication in state institutions. NBCentralAsia observers say that technology aside, the authorities lack one crucial element – the will to allow their people free access to information. 

In late April, President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov issued instructions to set up a unified IT and communications system for public administration. New fibre-optic cables will be laid to allow national government to communicate freely with other state institutions.

Since Berdymuhammedov came to power in 2007, the introduction of new technologies has been a running theme in his public statements. He eased formal restrictions on internet use, ordered kindergartens, schools and universities to be equipped with computer rooms and required new buildings to have internet connections built in before they could come into use.

By mid-2009, nine ministries and other state agencies had launched websites.

Yet access to information is still a problem, for practical and ideological reasons. There are only 15 internet cafes for a population of five million, and access to the web there is restricted. While schools and universities also have the internet, staff either limit use by students or prevent it altogether.

Foreign-based websites that cover Turkmenistan are blocked.

Elsewhere in the world, the concept of e-government is all about openness and participation, about ensuring that government is responsive to its citizens. For instance, people get to write directly to official institutions and view the response. They can also monitor the progress of court cases, as happened in neighbouring Kazakstan, where prior to the changes, trial defendants found it hard to follow proceedings.

However, all this presupposes that the authorities are willing to open up and become more transparent about their actions. That does not seem to be the case in Turkmenistan, where the authorities are focusing on better institution-to-institution links while remaining silent on affording access to information to the general public.

“We aren’t seeing any move to create the elements of e-government,” said Annadurdy Khajiev, a Turkmen analyst based in Bulgaria. “E-government envisages several forms of interaction – between state and citizens, between state and business, and between different branches of the state”.

An official at the economy and development ministry said previous steps toward greater openness had failed. “We tried to hold an e-vote, but even then they managed to rig the results of the vote,” he said. “I don’t think anything will change now.”

A former civil servant in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat said that in reality, the project was simply about providing better communications and electronic databases for government.

“Ministries and state institutions have problems with internet access,” he said, adding that officials he had spoken too had no real idea of what e-government was.

An official at the communications ministry, who requested anonymity, suggested that the project also entailed an element of window-dressing.

“It’s another attempt to show everyone that Turkmenistan is a civilized society,” he said. “In reality, the country is moving backwards. We live in isolation - we see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing.”

A lecturer at a technical institute in Ashgabat agreed that promoting new technologies was little more than superficial PR.

“Government members are shown on TV every day. They used to be holding notepads, and now they have laptops in front of them,” he said. “It isn’t clear why they have them [laptops] since they aren’t looking at them anyway.”

This article was produced as part of IWPR’s News Briefing CentralAsia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.