HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION AS A KEY CONSTRAINT IN THE E-GOVERNMENT AND DIGITALIZATION OF AFGHANISTAN

Abstract

The e-Government systems and applications in Afghanistan started very well, however, ended up either half way (Passport System) or were completely closed (NPA System). The architecture and development of the systems were based on standard; however, no survey or research was conducted to address Human Computer Interaction, leading the systems to a rather technical and complex user experience. Common people started getting scared of submitting wrong data, paving the way to middlemen (data entry shops) due to the complexity of UI/UX and lack of data in local languages. Human Computer Interaction for the e-Government of the coun (Preprint)
Authors: Elam Akmal 
Published: October 2022

BACKGROUND

Human Computer Interaction is a topic that has rarely been touched in Afghanistan, however, a number of applications and systems have been launched in Afghanistan in the span of last 20 years of the democratic government of Afghanistan under the name of e-Government and Digitalization. These applications have addressed a number of G2C processes. The systems were initiated by Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology (www.mcit.gov.af), under the directorate of e-Government. This directorate published a concept note in 2008 and named the project e-GIF (E-Government Interoperability Framework) that included broad policies, standards and protocols ought to have adopted and applied throughout the government in all its agencies, so that the intended large number of IT systems in various departments, entities and other bodies of the government could virtually operate as a single large system. In other words, the systems must interoperate with each other. The goal of e-GIF was to reach interoperability in all parts of the government. According to the ICT Strategy of Government of Afghanistan, which was duly signed and approved by the then President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai and the then Minister of MCIT Amirzai Sangin in 2008, the implementation of this process had its own challenges including lack of security, bureaucracy, lack of power sources and high rates of fuel, low literacy rate, lack of information and content in the local languages and high rates of internet and intranet connectivity (ICT Strategy of Afghanistan as part of the Afghan National Development Strategy). Furthermore, the ICT Policy for Afghanistan had a detailed policy and plan for the capacity building of the government employees, which was partially implemented, yet, no vivid plans for the machine literacy of the local people (ICT Policy of Afghanistan, A digital for development and Social Change 2015-2024).
Later, an office was established and named Asan Khedmat in July 2016 (www.mmd.gov.af) , which was later on, taken over by Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology (MCIT) and acted as a one-stop shop for public services of Afghanistan under the auspices of the Ministry of Communication & information technology (Official TOR One-Stop-Shop). It aimed at simplifying public services provided to businesses and population of Afghanistan. A remarkable span of time marked a period of laying ground for full launch of the services. During this period, Asan Khedmat experts had accumulated an enormous amount of information on the existing state of affairs of the government services and shortlisted close to 50 of those services for simplification. 18 of these services were simplified and up to 20 were lined to be simplified by soon (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2015/09/24/afghanistan-shows-way-e-government). The e-Government of MCIT and Asan Khedmat worked simultaneously in the area and had distributed responsibilities and authorities based on internal policies. In addition, in 2021, based on a meeting chaired by the then President of Afghanistan, it was emphasized that the biggest priority of the government was digitalization. This “digitalization”, stressed by the President was a subsequent third project of the Presidential Palace in the overall e-Government of the country (www.speiegel.de/international). Consequently, a number of applications were developed and launched by these entities all together. However, the systems were initially designed for trained operators. The population had zero access to these systems and had to visit either a one-stop-shop, or submit all the documents in hard copies with their originals to be entered into the systems by the operators and data entry personnel. In addition to this, a number of projects were outsourced to private companies to automate and digitalize the documentation process of government, which too, worked in the same manner. This process created a huge gap between the population and the machines, creating a constraint in the Human Computer Interaction and the Digitalization process.

OBJECTIVE

1. To study the importance of Human Computer Interaction in the digitalization and e-Government Systems of Afghanistan.
2. To provide a comprehensive analysis of the effect of HCI in the e-Government of Afghanistan.
3. To propose solutions for UX/UI in the systems.
4. To study a simple and practical comparison of Human Computer Interaction with other countries.
5. To propose solution for lack of information and data in local languages, a huge gap in HCI of the systems.
6. To address lack of literary material such as user manuals, trainings and capacity building in order to decrease the gap between human, computer and their interaction.

METHODS

The research mainly focuses on the importance of HCI and how it proved to be a constraint in the implementation of e-Government projects and systems of Afghanistan. The research has been based on the following.

RESULTS

When it comes to Human Computer Interaction (HCI), it is a multidisciplinary subject that focuses on the design of computers and the experience of users. The term is rather wider than computer science and involves cognitive psychology, behavioral sciences, arts and design. Moreover, the literacy rate of the community, basic knowledge of machine usage and most importantly, language localization takes a vital place in the subject.
As rightly recognized by Hewett and colleagues (Hewett, T., Baecker, R., Card, S., Carey, T., Gasen, J., Mantei, M., Perlman, G., Strong, G., & Verplank, W), there is no agreed upon definition of the range of topics that form the area of Human– Computer Interaction, however, primarily, we see HCI as Human, the user, Machine, the computer and the interaction between them. In the Human part of the subject, the population is taken into consideration along with all the factors that may influence the interaction including, but not limited to sensory architectures that may include artificial intelligence or simple sensors to react over sight, touch and sound, the literacy level of the population including basic knowledge of the machines, their age and cultural differences [Human-Computer Interaction by Alan Dix, Janet Finlay, Gregory D. Abowd and Russel Beale, Third Edition]. In addition to this, in a society like Afghanistan, where very few people understand English and a limited number understand Dari, the localization of the systems in the local languages take a vital part in the HCI.
Computer is any machine designed for the interaction of humans. In a country like Afghanistan, computer is literally only “computer” with a limited addition of other systems such as biometrics, ATM machines, mobile devices, televisions, remote controls and other similar simple devices which are no longer literally considered computers. As far as computer itself is concerned, it needs a basic knowledge of the operation for the interaction. In addition to this, few more comprehensive frameworks of HCI have been developed, coinciding with the observation first mentioned.

Then comes the paradigm. An interaction paradigm is a model or pattern of human–computer interaction that encompasses all aspects of interaction, including physical, virtual, perceptual, and cognitive. According to Human-Computer Interaction, third edition by Alan Dix, Janet Finlay, Gregory D. Abowd and Russel Beale, paradigms for interaction are listed as Time sharing, Video display units, Programming toolkits, Personal computing, Operating System and Interface, The metaphor and Direct manipulation. The explanation of each of them individually will destruct the main focus of the subject, yet, mentioning them is considered essential to get to the conceptual aspect of HCI.

If we go to the very basics of HCI, the community had an automatic knowledge of the initial so-called machines such as remote controls, telephones, televisions and radios, however, the modern computers have got a lot more than that to know. A detailed orientation of the system is required to be presented individually, in groups, through social networks, television and radios, in order to literate the population in layman language.

CONCLUSIONS

The e-Government systems and applications in Afghanistan started very well, however, ended up either half way (Passport System) or were completely closed (NPA System). The architecture and development of the systems were based on standard; however, no survey or research was conducted to address Human Computer Interaction, leading the systems to a rather technical and complex user experience. Common people started getting scared of submitting wrong data, paving the way to middlemen (data entry shops) due to the complexity of UI/UX and lack of data in local languages. Human Computer Interaction for the e-Government of the country was as crucial as the development of the systems itself. Ignoring the fact, HCI became a constraint in the e-Government of Afghanistan and systems developed for the population alternatively started being used by the government officials, serving as data entry clerks for the population. In this study, the lack of HCI and its subjects have been addressed from the cognitive psychology, behavioral sciences, arts and design perspectives in the e-Government systems of Afghanistan. A number of e-Government and Digitalization projects have been presented as case studies, providing practical yet valid arguments to demonstrate to Human Computer Interaction as a key constraint in the e-Government of Afghanistan.