Babu Ram Dawadi's Blog: Policy Patching: LIRNEasia and CPRSouth Contributions in South Asia

I am just introducing the term “Policy Patching” which is not the patch management policy that we apply in security policy update and software bug fixing, here this term is more related to fixing issues of public policy against its implementation hurdles. For the development of a country and the society, first politics matters then policy matters. In the context of developing countries like Nepal, any kind of policy formulation/promulgation is not a big deal rather its implementation is a major issues. Especially in ICT policies, we need to identify the root cause about why it happens. Policies are developed, approved, published and entered into implementation phase according to public policy life-cycle. Once a policy is formulated, then its implementation and evaluation is the major part whether the policies outlined are perfectly implemented and the outcomes are achieved as per expectations. Most of the developing countries in south Asia, a kind of collaborative research on policy life cycle is required where we need to find out the cause about why the policy implementation is difficult and meeting of expectations are not achievable. So far the Nepalese context, the promulgated ICT & broadband policy clearly envisioned certain ambitious targets while its implementation and meeting those targets are highly challenging. It seems that the basic research and root cause analysis part was missing where national infrastructure readiness status, literacy rate, investment, government subsidy, harmonizing with other policies like energy policy, transportation policy, etc. are to be bench-marked during its development.

Policy patching means earliest fixing of policy implications during its implementation and after review. Policy review evaluates the implementation with its impacts. Sometimes the deviation in implementation gives rise to wrong impacts in the society that should be immediately revised and update the policy so that proper monitoring during implementation helps to identify the problem that should be fixed/patched. Developing the patch shall also pass through the policy life cycle process so that its effects on positive outcome shall be guaranteed.

After having my master’s degree in public administration, I realized that policy is the major driving engine to implement core technologies what we dealt with as an engineer. CPRSouth-2014 workshop and conference program held in Maropeng, South Africa was quite supportive for me to elaborate more about overall research and policy making. CPRSouth become a good platform for a young scholar like me to encourage young entrepreneur/researcher in the capacity building via policy influence.

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I am happy to receive an email invitation by Prof. Rohan Samarajiva on behalf of LIRNEasia & the founder of CPRSouth young scholar program. My interests and current status helped me out to be a part of workshop program viz. “Capacity building through policy influence” held on 2nd and 3rd march 2019, Negombo Sri Lanka.

After 5 years of CPRSouth conference in 2014, I got a chance to meet again the CPRSouth selected alumni and the LIRNEasia research team. I was quite excited to join the program and share my experiences with possible collaborations in policy research in South Asia. LIRNEasia is established with the mission of Catalyzing policy change through research to improve people’s lives in the emerging Asia Pacific by facilitating their use of hard and soft infrastructures through the use of knowledge, information and technology. While CPRSouth is established with the objective to stimulate policy research and contribute via yearly conferences. Unfortunately it has already missed the plan of 2019 conferences. Oops! Prof. Rohan’s information sharing regarding the funding problem for upcoming conference really hearted me but this was the fact that support for quality research paper presentation and sponsor for author participation including young scholar workshop management was almost terminated due to lack of funding where they need to find other funder to revive this conference. Complete volunteering to revive this conference/workshop program as an alumni is also not possible. Anyway, I wish good luck! to the CPRSouth community leader for such a research and innovation activities in the future.

As I already mentioned the issues of implementing policy in most of the developing countries in the region. I felt that apart from ITU-T and ITU-D activities to standardize the ICT/Broadband policies in the region, LIRNEasia is committing to have harmonized policy and its implementation evaluation within the Global South in collaboration with well recognized other continental organizations. Hence, I recognized LIRNEasia as one of the policy patching and harmonizing agency in the global south that rigorously do research in ICT policy formulation, implementation and evaluation with recommended suitable solutions because it has mandate to help facilitate the use of hard and soft infrastructures in the region through research that catalyzes policy change.
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My first visit to Negombo was highly impressive. As being the citizen of mountainous country, the open space sea beach and peaceful environment, high quality hotel stay with hygienic sea foods made my stay quite enjoyable at Negobmo, Sri Lanka.