Rewiring Afghanistan

Business 2.0 By Thomas Mucha, April 2003 Issue

Alan Pearson is replacing Soviet-era accounting ledgers with a 21st-century computer network.

When Afghanistan's fledgling government needed to rebuild part of the country's war-ravaged infrastructure, it didn't turn to the United Nations, a relief agency, or a military man. It went straight to a management consultant.

Alan Pearson is a 58-year-old Aussie who's leading an eight-person team from BearingPoint (BE) (formerly KPMG Consulting) to build a computerized financial-management system that will help Afghanistan rejoin the 21st century. To mark the start of Afghanistan's fiscal year, the new system will enter service on March 21.

The financial network will allow the war-torn nation to manage the $4 billion in foreign aid that's expected to arrive in coming years -- money that's needed to pay for roads, schools, hospitals, and other reconstruction projects. The computerized tools will be a vast improvement over the country's current approach to financial management -- a dusty handbook on accounting principles written in 1965.

Pearson has been working in Kabul's drab concrete Ministry of Finance building since August. There weren't any computers on hand when he arrived, so he bought a handful of PCs that had been cobbled together on Kabul's streets by crafty entrepreneurs. Electricity is spotty, so a generator was brought in to run the equipment. To maintain telephone service, Pearson installed a satellite dish.

His team also had to train local workers, most of whom had never before laid eyes on a computer. "You start with the on/off switch and take it from there," he says. But within three weeks, most workers were able to input data and perform basic tasks. The new system, which Pearson describes as "deliberately simple," is built around Windows 2000, a few Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Compaq servers, and a Cisco-based (CSCO) local area network.

Safety has been an ongoing concern. Two deadly car bombings have struck Kabul since Pearson arrived, yet the dangerous work is just beginning. The project's next phase will extend the system to Afghanistan's unruly provinces. And you thought you had to worry about job security.

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