Connecting the digital dots February 23, 2021 This month marks the mid-term of the current National Assembly, which took oath on August 13, 2018. Prime Minister Imran Khan took the oath of the highest office in the land on August 18, 2018. Regardless of how we measure the term of the PTI coalition that won the right to govern in the 2018 general election, it has passed the midway mark. We are now closer to the next general election in Pakistan than we are to the previous one. One of the lessons PM Khan may have learnt in the first half of his term is that all the top-down power in the world can’t fix a system that is broken at the very basic levels. This is why, despite relatively strong support among the urban youth, an historic alignment with the military leadership, and provincial governments in three of the four provinces, the PTI has found it difficult to convert its ideas and energies into effective public policy. Few better examples of this exist than the wide expanse of public policy that broadly falls into the category of digitalization.