Section 3 | RULES OF THE GAME In addition, the NESP blueprint featured gender equity, in particular the need for additional data to understand gendered patterns of enrollment, completion, and achievement rates, with nods to gender-responsive teacher training and classroom instruction. Given low MoE staff capacity in general, calls for highly technical skills such as gender-responsive budgeting and gender-sensitive quality assurance standards may be overly ambitious. In 2016, the Ministry of Education also created a new Department of Alternative Education (DAE) responsible for technology education and using technology for education, with an emphasis on reaching the 3.5 million nonmatriculated school-aged youth. The DAE plans to explore how social media, smartphones, and 2G/3G feature phones can be deployed to meet the educational needs of hard-to-reach populations, such as underage youth working in the informal economy. The Department has expressed interest in working with INGOs and CSOs through venues such as public libraries to provide digital and life skills training. While there seem to be few institutional spoilers in the NLD-controlled parts of the executive branch for expanding access to the internet and digital skills in general, there are many bureaucratic obstacles. Delays and confusion caused by cabinet reshuffling and consolidation, lack of incentives for innovation, low capacity within the civil service, and competing priorities have led to a situation in which effective collaboration across administrative jurisdictions is not yet happening. In the fall of 2016 the World Bank hosted inter-ministerial discussions with ICT points of contact from all ministries, but cooperation is sporadic and slow. For example, the Ministry of Construction is not participating in meetings around the MoTC-led process to create a Universal Access Fund designed to support initiatives like connecting rural schools and getting fiber-optic cable to the “last mile.” Furthermore, many executive bodies are not prioritizing internet connectivity as an integrated activity within their own mandates or providing the technical staff and budgets to support increased citizen engagement with government through e-services or social media, despite international technical assistance to that end. It is difficult to prioritize nuanced obstacles like the gender digital divide, which affect broad public needs and constituent services in myriad ways, when your own offices and staff lack adequate equipment, Ending the Gender Digital Divide in Myanmar: A Problem-Driven Political Economy Assessment | 54