Responsive policymaking in Pakistan: Decision-making around infrastructure in Balochistan

IGC Pakistan is supporting the Government of Balochistan (GoB) in developing the contours of a spatial strategy to guide the province’s budgetary allocations and development priorities while reflecting Balochistan’s needs and strengths. A previous IGC study has helped set the context for a new framework for growth in Balochistan based on a spatial and data-driven approach and is now forming the basis of the governments on-going negotiations to finance a full-fledged Spatial Strategy for the province.

This work has identified two key components that a spatial strategy for Balochistan must entail:

• A data development framework which can include both spatial (imageries, maps and map-related) as well as non-spatial (alpha numeric and text) data across all departments, sectors and districts.
• An IT-based Decision Support System to make use of this data, with the objective of supporting evidence-based and responsive decision-making.

This project will support the development of such a Decision Support System, allowing it to be designed, pilot-tested and rolled-out. This focus will be on developing a web-GIS based road Infrastructure Spatial Decision Support System to assist the GoB in infrastructure planning, especially centered around connecting rural markets to urban centers. Using this information, policymakers will be able to make data-driven and transparent decisions such as prioritising districts for road infrastructure planning on the basis of socio-economic status/need and planning a new road by performing spatial contextual analysis of the proposed road alignment and prioritising existing roads for completion/repair/dualization works.