The Minister of State for Information Technology, Anusha Rahman, held a consultative session with the consultants of International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), Korea who are providing technical assistance to Ministry of IT to devise an e-Government Master Action Plan along with e-services Deployment Strategy for the citizen of Pakistan through a fully funded of ITU. The said session was also attended by the Member (Telecom), ED (NITB), Director (ICU) and other officials of the Ministry of Information Technology.
The Minister stated that IT Ministry is in the process of rolling the e-office suite including e-filing system in the federal government and needs to develop an action plan for taking e-governance to international standard. Anusha Rahman said IT Ministry has recently established a new organisation - NITB with the merger of Pakistan Computer Bureau (PCB) and Electronic Government Directorate (EGD) to promote and integrate Information Technology in all the national programmes by focusing on the technology promotions, successful implementation of e-Governance programmes and raising expertise level of the IT human resource to enable Pakistan enter into next era of accelerated digitalisation.
The Minister of State for IT emphasised the need for the formulation of e-government master plan, its allied strategies and KPIs to cover all aspects of successful implementation of e-government programmes and to promote collaboration, digitisation and innovation in both traditional socio-economic sectors and new emerging technologies. The proposed plan should cover all possible areas such as e-learning, e-education, e-health, e-agriculture, e-commerce, research and innovation etc.
The Minister further stated that she would welcome collaboration and technical assistance from the ITU and NIPA to assist Pakistan for successful implementation of e-government program in shortest possible period of time based on enriched experiences. The representative from ITU and NIPA, Korea Consultants appreciated the efforts of the Ministry of IT and stated that adoption of e-government programmes is immensely important for the development of any country as has been proven through positive correlation between adoption of e-government and macro economic indicators.
They also assured that the ITU and NIPA would actively look into providing technical assistance to the Ministry of Information Technology in formulating e-government master plan and its allied strategies, and developing long term relationship in this ever evolving area of immense importance for growth and development.-PR