The government is planning to ban social networking websites such as Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube in the government offices owing to increased risk of important data leak.
The National Information Technology Board (NITB) is working on a framework and has recommended the government to ban social networking websites such as Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube in the government offices.
According to the proposed framework, a new communication system in the lines of WhatsApp would be introduced for the federal government employees as most of the intra-government communication is being done through WhatsApp which increases the risk of important data leak.
This was revealed before the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication which met here with Ali Khan Jadoon in the chair on Wednesday.
In order to stop the practice, the committee was informed that a new local social network, modeled on WhatsApp, would be introduced into the government offices to streamline communications. The implementation of this framework is likely to impose a complete ban on the use of social media by the government servants during working hours.
It was said that not only the use of social media applications or pages including Facebook and WhatsApp would be banned during the office timing but the officials would also be barred from bringing storage devices -USBs - to the offices.
To a question regarding fake news on social media, the NITB official said that big social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have been approached by the government and efforts to develop standard operating procedures (SoPs) are underway through different official meetings with the representative of social media sites.
The DG NITB said that to control fake news, a separate framework is under consideration under which only the authentic government news would be issued on social media.
The NITB official further said that they are working on SoPs for anti-money laundering as well for developing framework for online payment gateway.
The committee was further informed that all the federal government offices will be converted into e-offices by June 2020. The committee was further informed that e-office was started in 2009 but has not been completed yet.
The federal cabinet in March 2019 approved to convert all the federal ministries and departments by June 2020 with centralized procurement which would cost Rs 1.4 billion. However, after the rupee depreciation, the cost is increased to Rs 1.8 billion, said joint secretary MoITT. He added that there is no legal cover. He said that legislation would be done once the government offices are converted to e-office.
He further said that it has been decided that all the ministries would surrender non-development fund to the ministry and a centralized procurement would be made. He said that so far Rs 11.7 million have been surrendered by eight ministries.
The committee was apprised that 29 ministries have been upgraded to different levels of e-offices while 13 are still at zero level. The NITB was working on integration of data nervous system which will provide a central plate form for communication within all the public departments.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa IT Board official said that they are facing difficulties in e-office implementation as the government officials are reluctant to adopt it. He further said that there is no legal cover for data safety and needs legislation before implementing e-office. He further raised questions on KP e-bidding while saying that currently the contractors only apply online but the tenders are being opened on the old way. He said that e-bidding is not totally digitized.
The NITB officials apprised the House that one million online applications have been received under 'Kamyab Jawan Program.' "In case of denying of application, the bank is responsible to give explanation to the applicant", they added.
They said that PM Youth Loan has received 70000 applications over the last 5 years and their data has also been included in current program data.
An official from the ministry informed the committee members that digitization of federal departments was underway and e-tendering was also one of the priorities of IT ministry.
The NITB also informed the meeting about another program named 'BootCamp' under which the officials from international giant IT hub Silicon Valley will be invited to train the federal employees with respect to different operations under Ministry of IT and Telecommunications.
PPP MNA Naz Baloch suggested that this training should not be restricted only for the federal employees but provincial employees of different government organizations should also be given the opportunity to get the training from IT experts of Silicon Valley.
The committee also expressed serious reservations over important vacant posts in the ministry since long. The committee was informed that interviews for the Member Telecom has been concluded and a summary to the Prime Minister would be submitted next week for final approval.
The IT Ministry informed that matter of Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) has been taken with the Ministry of Interior and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
The meeting was attended by MNAs Maiza Hameed, Ali Gohar Khan, Kanwal Shauzab, Makhdoomzada Zain Hussain Qureshi and officials from Ministry for Information Technology and Telecommunication.
Comments
Comments are closed.