15 IT projects approved
ISLAMABAD – The ministry of information technology has approved 15 projects worth Rs266.06 million for the uplift of information technology and telecom sector in the private and public sectors of the country.
The approval was accorded at a meeting of the Departmental Development Working Party (DDWP) presided over by Secretary for Ministry of Information Technology Khalid Saeed. Under one of the projects, hospital management information system and networking facilities will be provided at the Capital Hospital. The project focuses on improving the quality of patient-care and cutting down delays in patient examination.
The project will facilitate the provision of medical services to patients as they would not have to run to different labs for collection of medical reports. Instead, all the information will be available online to the doctor concerned. The project will also help in streamlining the medical store records and checking pilferage.
It will further facilitate the hospital management to do analysis and research on available data and take decisions. Five of the approved projects are aimed at enhancing and improving telecom services in the remote areas while ten are meant for improvement of citizen services and development of IT industry.
Through one of the projects, the ministry would support local IT-enabled service companies to achieve COPC international certification besides providing consultancy services to five such local companies having offshore business.
The project would help bring these companies to a level where they are able to attain the COPC certification. The COPC certification is a world renowned quality benchmark for IT- enabled services sector, and companies having this certification will be able to get recognition in the international market.
The ministry has an ongoing scheme whereby fresh graduates are provided internship in the IT industry. Due to a tremendous response to the scheme, the DDWP approved an enhancement in the number of internees from 2,000 to 3,000.
In addition, the scheme has been enhanced to cater for new markets. Under the project, 40 students would be provided specialized training/apprenticeship in computer graphics, animation and games development.
The DDWP also approved enhancement in the scope of an ongoing project for IT enablement of city district government Karachi. The project will automate services such as birth and death registration, property tax assessment, payment system, record of property rights, leasing, registration and transfers.
The project also includes creation of physical IT cells in 18 towns of Karachi and training of employees on the new systems. Enhancement in the scope of the project for upgrading IT training facilities at the Pakistan Administrative Staff College was also approved to enable senior government officers (BS-20) to develop skills for the new operating environment of e-government.
A project for establishment of a IT centre at the Akhtar Hameed Khan National Centre for Rural Development and Municipal Administration, Islamabad, was also okayed.
This project will help in the capacity building of local government officials and enable them to develop skills for e-government. The local government officials will be given hands-on training on personal computers.
A pilot project for the end-users and system administrators training on open-source software was also approved. A pilot project had been approved in December 2003 to train 4,000 end-users and 200 system administrators. As the response to the initiative was overwhelming, the DDWP decided to increase the number of system administrators to be trained from 200 to 1,000.
A project for provision of e-services for submission of documents at the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan was also approved. Presently, the SECP maintains records of 48,000 companies, which send 45 different forms to multiple locations in hard copy format, which are processed manually.
Source: Dawn
Date:9/14/2004
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