On December 27,
2021, a short but most enlightening ad appeared in the local newspapers. It offered
more information about the government’s “digital transformation” plans than the
press releases by the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship and the
Greater Amman Municipality combined.
اضافة اعلان
The ad
opened with background information about the digital ministry having received
financing from the World Bank under the “Youth, Technology, and Jobs Project”. From
this program’s budget, the ministry planned to cover the cost of hiring a consulting
firm to conduct a “digital transformation needs assessment” of GAM.
The winning bidders
were also expected to use their findings to formulate a “digital transformation
roadmap” for the city of Amman, all while showcasing “GAM’s readiness toward
digital transformation” with a list of its “strengths and weaknesses”, and an
understanding of its “current digital status”.
In a nod to the
public sector’s abhorrently low standards, the very last line of the ad listed
the wrong URL to the ministry’s tender page. It led, instead, to a
badly-designed “404” error page which lacked a top navigation menu (or bar) to take
users back to the site’s homepage, just another example of how attention to
detail is far from being the government’s strongest suit.
This also affirms
the notion that the Jordanian government is good at theoretical things like
vision and strategy, but remains hopelessly weak when it comes to implementation
and action.
Up until a
few weeks ago, the tender was still on the website with four PDFs to download
(fortunately, I have downloaded them all). But checking the ministry’s website
this week, the tender page was nowhere to be found. The link now leads to a
page that says: “Sorry, this content is expired.”
It remains a
mystery whether the reason for removing the proposal from the ministry’s
website is due to tender cancelation (although a round of Q&As was already
published on the now-deleted page, signaling some level of interest from
potential bidders), or whether the terms of reference and supplementary
documents offered too much transparency and information that neither the ministry
nor the World Bank wanted us, laymen and women, to be privy to.
A third and highly
optimistic scenario (therefore, an unlikely one) could be that the government has
decided to give its World Bank-designed digital transformation plans a serious
rethink – on occasion of the Royal Court’s National Economic Workshop to reform
the economy, which includes digital plans, water, and the creative industries among
topics discussed.
If this is
not the case, though, then it is probably high time for the government (with
its recently formed public sector modernization committee) to perform a
full-fledged investigation into the digital transformation dossier, in hopes of
unearthing the reasons for the removal of a publicly floated tender from a
government-owned website.
The
investigation might also need to gauge the Ministry of Digital Economy’s level
of competence in handling Jordan’s digital transformation plans, and whether it
is capable of meeting the highest possible standards of professionalism and
governance.
Sadly, there
is plenty of evidence that points to the ministry’s inability to manage the
complexity of such a dossier in a way that protects Jordanians’ privacy.
Although
Jordan’s long-awaited privacy bill (the “Personal Data Protection Law of 2021”)
is currently pending ratification in Parliament, the government’s track record illustrates
a worryingly weak grasp of the concept.
One example
comes from the ministry’s poor handling of Jordanians’ vaccination data. In
April last year, the government turned a deaf ear to calls from the Jordan Open
Source Association (JOSA) to stop sharing vaccinated people’s personal data
with telecommunications companies.
To quote a
blog post on its website, “JOSA denounces this misuse of data by
telecommunication companies, particularly the use of such data for commercial
purposes.”
The
association went on to say that text messages to “registrants following their
vaccination appointment to promote or advertise services and offerings such as
free data packages” were “sent without the consent of those who registered, and
without their knowledge that their data was [being] shared with these
companies.”
Without a
doubt, a ministry that allows anyone to obtain, store, and then monetize the “un-anonymized”
vaccination data of citizens cannot be trusted with the skilled implementation
of digital plans affecting the lives and privacy of Jordanians. This is the
kind of medical data that should stay confidential and be protected by special
privacy laws, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, aka HIPAA, in the US.
In the absence of such laws, insight, leadership and common sense should step
in to fill the gap.
Let us also
not forget last year’s social media uproar denouncing the
badly designed Sanad application, which the ministry treats as its treasured
first step into Jordan’s digital transformation. Seeing how this app was
littered with structural and conceptual problems, one can conclude the road
ahead is equally littered with problems, short-sightedness and poor governance.
Speaking of
governance, around a month after the above-mentioned ad, chairman of GAM’s
temporary committee announced the municipality’s completion of its five-year
strategic plan, saying that transforming Amman into a “smart city” was one of
the prominent features of the strategy – which Ammanis had no hand in creating.
He offered no further details with regards to the nature of the smart city or
its scope.
The ad and
the ensuing tender were the only two places offering information, but that is
not where Jordanians normally look for answers. Such opaqueness further widens
the trust gap between local government and citizens, especially when the people
of Amman are excluded from plans affecting the city they call “home”.
In early
February, I wrote an opinion piece critical of GAM’s classic “top-down”
governance approach, the looming surveillance technologies threatening to ruin Ammanis’
quality of life, and the possible mass deployment of biometric sensors as an
egregious breach of citizens’ data privacy.
Last
Tuesday, this dystopian foreshadowing turned out to be more tangible than
initially anticipated.
The Queen
Alia International Airport, in collaboration with Royal Jordanian, announced plans
to install “facial recognition” biometric scanners across select self-check-in kiosks and at boarding gates to trial test tech
solutions designed by a Spanish company.
Conversely, three
states in the US have already banned facial recognition from the public and
private sectors, on the grounds that it stood in sharp contrast with their
inhabitants’ values.
A decision about
installing facial recognition cameras and biometrics scanners at the airport,
or any other private or public space in Amman or across the Kingdom, should be
subjected to careful planning and regulation by the government, with active
participation from all shades of civil society and the private sector, not just
the tech crowd.
A government
with so much incompetence weighing it down should probably wait until it builds
enough capacity to handle a sensitive dossier like digital
transformation, chiefly because it calls for high-end skill and agility, which
are certainly not part of its current skillset.
The writer has reported on the environment, worked in the
public sector as a communications officer, and served as managing editor of a
business magazine, spokesperson for a humanitarian INGO, and as head of a PR
agency.
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