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*Dawn, ** 14 April 2004*
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National IT programme in offing: Owais *
KARACHI, April 13: An overall national Information Technology programme
is being initiated in the country and this would be implemented during
the next two to three years. This was stated by the federal minister for
information technology, Owais Ahmed Khan Leghari, while talking to APP
here on Tuesday.
He said it would be a huge project and the costing part of it would be
determined in the next three months. The minister said the first phase
of such a plan that pertains to infrastructure has been approved by the
ministry.
He said this has now been referred to the Ecnec for necessary approval.
Owais Leghari stated that the entire ministries of the federal
government would be linked through fibre and their processes would be
automated and thus a "paperless government" would be brought to the fore.
He was of the opinion that because of the overall national IT programme,
a great deal of demand for IT work would be created in this very
sector.ast three decades.
Mr. Leghari said it is now being recognized as an important subject by
the corporate sector in Pakistan and that disaster recovery or business
continuity planning is increasingly being adopted as a critical part of
overall Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) by many institutions.
The minister announced support for any such initiative that would
enhance understanding of dependable and reliable systems. He said his
ministry fully supports efforts by the private sector to introduce
global best practices into the Pakistani marketplace.
Mr. Leghari also highlighted the incentives that the government is
providing to attract companies to invest in Pakistan and added that we
are ready to go extra mile to ensure that we provide the right environment.
He said that he had recently initiated a programme where the government
would partially subsidize or even in some cases bear all the costs
associated with training Pakistan specialists in areas that the company
identifies.
The minister stated that we would be happy to bear the cost of training
in disaster recovery and business continuity planning. He pointed out
that already nearly 100 software companies in the country are ISO
certified.
Mr. Leghari said that even though bandwidth rates have been brought down
drastically, he has asked the new management at PTCL to look into how
these could be brought down even further.
The Chairman of the National Telecommunication Corporation, Rear Admiral
Shahid Farooq, was of the view that protecting information from
corruption, ensuring maximum uptime, consolidation, facilitating fast
information restoration and protecting sensitive, confidential
information electronically is quickly becoming a matter of doing
business in the digital age. -APP
