KZBlog

I had heard that Massimov asked the cabinet of Ministers to buy iPads but hadn’t realized it had started a mad trend.

While I don’t think it’s a bad idea for the government to embrace technology, the reason given (that he wants to send them messages at any time) doesn’t seem to justify the expense. Every one in Kazakhstan has a cellphone. All the higher government officials have the latest Nokia, and iPhone and probably an extra cellphone or two lying around. So they can be reached by email, text, and of course, phone calls 24 hours a day. So I’m not clear what the iPads add in terms of value.

A second issue is security. I know Blackberry’s come with heavy-duty encryption which is why Obama gets to have one. I don’t think iPads are so heavily encrypted. I won’t encourage any techies out there want to test my theory by setting something up near the government buildings but perhaps the KNB or KazSatNet should do some field testing first. Also you may remember this incident when 11400 iPad users may have been put at risk due to a security breach at Apple. Now one assumes that the government has already thought of this, and probably wouldn’t reveal any extra security precautions they might be taking.

Now, I know many people who work in government who would love to see more technology use and less paperwork. From what I hear, printing out memos and orders and graphs and databases for non-tech savy bosses, or because every document has to have a stamp and a signature on it, wastes a lot of paper and time. So if government start getting into the habit of sharing files electronically, it would cut way back on the ecological impact of the bureaucracy and increase efficiency. So let’s hope these reforms are moving in the direction of less paper and barriers and more free flows of information.