Archive for August 10th, 2008

PTA Website Assessment: Good But Needs Improvements

Published by Babar Bhatti on August 10, 2008 under Telecommunications

I was glad to see an assessment of the websites of the telecom regulatory organizations in Asia Pacific region. It validates what I have written before about how PTA site can be improved. Given the changes at PTA, I again emphasize that a few relatively small changes can make the PTA site extremely useful for the Pakistani public. If there is some content in Urdu, there is a community section and the information is organized in a more user-friendly way (hire a usability expert), then the PTA site will become a very useful tool.

Here are some observations from a website benchmarking survey conducted by LIRNEasia, a regional telecom policy and regulatory think tank.

A Telecom Regulator, like any other government organization, uses its website not only to deliver citizen services but also to improve its transparency and effectiveness in regulatory functions. LIRNEasia’s study awarded marks for each Regulatory Authority website for its effectiveness in regulatory communication. The Survey evaluated how well they achieve this objective looking from the angle of telecom operators, investors, consumers, researchers and the general public.

Both India and Pakistan have scored more than 75% marks. Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) was the top in South Asia just behind more advanced counterparts, largely because it did not have a local version of a site which the researchers thought a must for Asian countries with only selected sections of their populations read English.

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