Blogging by the Government of Pakistan?
When the Obama Administration came into power in the US, a lot of people expected that Government 2.0 would become mainstream. And for quite a few departments, it has been.
But did you ever expect that Pakistan would follow in it’s footsteps as well? Well, apparently we have!
The first signs of web 2.0 have appeared, in what is the most critical government departments of all, the ministry of finance!
I present, The Finance Ministry Blog! Hosted off their main finance.gov.pk website nonetheless!
It comes complete with comments, tags and RSS goodness! And has been operating since March 2009 with the first post appearing on 30th March 09. So far they’ve been updating it with all little tidbits of news regarding the minister and the budget.
I congratulate the powers that be behind the finance ministry on this brilliant step into the future! And hope to see similar initiatives by other area’s both within the government and the private sector of this country.
One thing is for sure, Blogging is definitely here to stay in Pakistan!

3:46 pm
Hmm, seems like a good initiative (:
3:48 pm
And it uses WordPress
4:41 pm
Wow! Now this IS interesting, indeed.
7:47 am
Good work, keep it up.
7:59 am
It definitely doesn’t set a good example if the design they use is stolen:
http://abdussamad.com/archives/140-Pakistani-Finance-Ministry-uses-stolen-blog-design!.html
10:20 am
I think its really good initiative by Finance Ministry Blog.
Thanks for sharing this information.
11:57 am
abdussamad: prove that the design is actually ‘stolen’, all you’ve proven is that it was made by someone else.
there is no text anywhere, no license of usage that i can find which says that the theme should be linked back to the original site (or to sponsored sites either). not on the designers website, not in the theme source files…?
it’s all well and good to criticize, but at least back it up before you do.
tania: good 2 see you here
3:17 pm
There is a false claim of credit for designing the theme by the solutions player company that did NOT design the theme. It is passing off someone elses work as its own and making money off that. I call that stealing.
Also Chiq is selling links on her themes on her site. You think advertisers are paying her so that people can remove the links?
12:59 pm
abdussamad: then it’s a simple matter of no proper licensing. If a license is not present, then the work can be subsumed as part of a larger project, provided the original source is still credited, which it is in this case.
So probably it wont be ethical, but ‘stealing’ would be labelling it too far.
12:45 am
NICE JOB bro ..
I m really thrilled to see ur work and specially i came to see this, when i saw ur name mentioned on another blog. SUPERB WORK DEAR .. good luck and if i can helpful do lemme know ..
i m a fellow Bahrian