The information contained on the official websites them is often outdated or the pages don’t load.
Dilnia Hama, a citizen in the Kurdistan Region, told Rudaw she tried to search government websites for employment.
“These websites have too many faults,” she said. “Some of them don’t even update their information for three months.”
Other government websites don’t open, and some have not been updated for 2018.
Current and timely government websites are one way for citizens to know the latest government developments and what services it delivers to its citizens.
Hiwa Afandi is the KRG’s head of the Department of Information Technology.
“The problem lies with the low technical level of those working in the ministries' IT or media offices, and the ministers themselves don’t follow up on their respective ministry websites,” he said.
Afandi expressed that more needs to be done horizontally and not just vertically.
“We have helped them with their central relations system, but we alone cannot catch up with constantly helping all these ministries and offices. And the government priority has unfortunately nowadays become providing salaries,” he added.
The main government website used by the prime ministry is the most up to date, but its ministries’ websites are not consistent.
On December 7, Interior Minister Karim Sinjari announced an initiative to make updating the ministries’ websites more routine.
The latest news on interior ministry’s website was published on January 16, while it has daily news and activities requiring its citizens and media to turn to social media and other traditional sources like phone calls to get the latest developments.
That is, Ministry of Reconstruction has not published in nearly two years.
The Ministry of Natural Resources last published on October 7.
The websites of some ministries don’t open or are inactive.
“We always work and publish any activities we have. However, most ministries have a problem with updating their websites in general,” Fuad Othman, media director of the Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs.
On KRG’s main website, it appears that no KRG minister has resigned, and all Gorran, Komal, and Islamic Union ministers are still in active duty, despite their pullout of the government.
“The websites of the office of information technology and KRG foreign relations office are active. They publish news daily and are committed to instructions,” Afandi said.
The KRG ministry of planning has not updated its website since August 2017.
The culture and Peshmerga ministries’ websites only display some Chinese writing and pictures of home appliances.
Hyperlinks for some government universities and the three provinces are on the KRG’s site, yet none of them open other than a link to the University of Kurdistan Hewler.
The KRG websites “only publish news and activities relevant to their ministries and ministers,” an employee working for one of the KRG websites who didn’t want to be named, said.
“In the beginning of forming the eighth cabinet, ministers paid much attention to their ministry websites, but don’t do this as much nowadays. There are ministers who might not open his ministry website in two weeks,” he claimed.
