'Incorporate technology into the working of the government's machinery,' Chairman PITB

"It is high time that we incorporated technology into the working of the government's machinery," says Dr Umar Saif, Chairman Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) in an exclusive sit down with BR Research.
A computer scientist by profession, Dr Saif is a tenured professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and became the youngest Vice Chancellor (VC) of a university in the country when he was appointed as the first VC of the newly created Information Technology University -Punjab (UIT-Punjab). Involved in devising IT solutions for problems plaguing a developing country like Pakistan, Saif's work has been widely acclaimed across the globe, with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Technology Review including him in its list of top 35 innovators under 35 in 2011.
Using technology to fend off disasters
Recently, Saif has been involved in the development of the much lauded dengue activity tracking system, a smart-phone based monitoring system which was devised by the Government of Punjab in order to avert a dengue epidemic this monsoon.
"We started off with the objective of developing a system where we could monitor and effectively co-ordinate the preventive activities that were being performed through various governmental agencies".
For this purpose, Dr Saif's team came up with the ingenious idea of using android phones to chart the spread of the disease as part of an early warning system. A special application was developed for these Android phones which were given to field workers and entomologists who photo-logged preventive activities that took place on a daily basis. In addition, GPS tagging of residences of confirmed dengue patients was carried out, earmarking vulnerable spots where fumigation was carried in a one mile-radius.
"We started feeding all this data into a system, passing it through a statistical scanner, which carried out spatial-temporal analysis to identify intersecting areas with breeding hotspots and reported patients. The data sent in by people working in the field was plotted onto Google maps, highlighting the scale of various geographical outbreaks and raising different alarms and helping us to cull the damage caused by the disease this time around," explained Saif.
"There was not an inch of the city we didn't cover," he continues with much pride. "During the high-risk four-month period, our teams performed a co-ordinated set of 43,000 different preventive activities to cull an outbreak of dengue, the first time an intergovernmental agency programme of this scale and such immense scope was carried out with such unprecedented success".
Proactive governance and the role of information technology
"I believe that the way forward is developing and institutionalising technology enabled solutions for the governance issues plaguing our country", says Saif who is convinced that introducing e-governance to the mix is the best way to reform critical government operations.
"An initiative that we have taken up in this regard is the Citizen Feedback Model where we monitor citizen's transactions with various government departments by proactively engaging with them. So let's say if you have had business with the Lahore Development Authority (LDA), the Registry office or the Police, we call you and ask you if you have been dealt with appropriately and if you were forced to offer a bribe to any government official during the process".
Under the CFM, some 9,000 people are called in a day on average, and the feedback collected is tabulated and published in scorecards which are then passed on to divisional commissioners, not only allowing the various government agencies to monitor the quality of their service delivery and making a technology-enabled stand-off against corruption, but also helping them to make proactive engagement with the public.
"Many exciting things are happening apart from this", he continues with his characteristic enthusiasm. "Not only are we working on putting into place systems for accountability, we are also working on ways we can make innovative uses of technology to ensure a smoother running of the various bits and parts that make up the entire system".
Some of the projects PITB is currently working on under Dr Umar Saif's guidance include the setting up of adaptive traffic signals across Lahore city; a plan that is set to cut back on traffic congestion within the city by managing traffic according to queue lengths. Additionally, his team has also worked closely with the city government on the development of an E-Ticketing system for the Lahore Metro Bus system, which will incorporate an electronic fare collection, thereby dramatically reducing pilferages within the whole set-up.
On Plan 9 and technology incubation in the country
Talking about the immense need to develop an eco-system encouraging technological entrepreneurship in the country, Dr Saif explains enthusiastically how he, in his role as the Chairman of PBIT, is helping foster the culture of innovation the country so direly needs.
"One thing we're very proud of is the incubation programme we have built here, called Plan 9, where we have exceptionally talented people working on the development of IT products that have a built-in ROI". The members of the 15 teams working under the plan have been recruited through various launch pads held across the country, and the idea is to provide opportunities to young entrepreneurs, enabling them to pitch their ideas to investors and engage with venture capitalists.
"With the government ready and willing to pick up the risk to invest into promising IT start-ups, we hope to see the development of a knowledge-driven economy", he adds. In this lieu, another important step has been the creation of the Information Technology University.
Currently located on the sixth floor of the Arfa Karim Software Technology Park in Lahore, the University is running an exclusive Masters programme in Computer Sciences and the long-term plans are to shift premises to the custom-built campus within the proposed Educational City.
Talking about the programme and its future, Dr Saif, who himself is part of the teaching faculty at ITU-Punjab, says that the eventual goal is not to grow into a very large university, but a small, research-oriented institution. "Our focus will be on running extremely exclusive, selective and targeted programmes that will help develop entrepreneurs for this country". "What we want essentially is for our students to be able to sniff out problems and work on locally relevant and implementable design-oriented solutions using IT that can help foster sustainable growth in the country," he adds.