In a bid to make governance more effective and achieve the goals of the government efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, accountability in decision-making and to deliver efficient and cost-effective public services to citizens, E-Governance is being adopted as a tool.
This was stated by Anusha Rehman State Minister for Ministry of Information Technology, while addressing "E-Government Workshop-2014" with the slogan "e-Government for smart Governance" organised by the IT Ministry in collaboration with ITU and NIPA, Korea here on Wednesday.
The purpose of the workshop was to obtain realistic input from participants on e- Governance initiative and play a significant role in advancing the e-Governance that have been started to strengthen governance in Pakistan. Anusha Rehman said the government is aggressively pursuing the roll-out of e-office suite at the federal government to achieve the aforesaid goals. Recently, the international community has shown its confidence in our policies being pursued since last 15 months.
Anusha Rahman said the government is giving high priority to information and communications technologies (ICT) sector, particularly e-Governance system in the country. E-Government Master Plan will be a workable, proactive roadmap for the NITB with due benchmark to measure progress on the plan. She said E-Government Master Plan being formulated to ensure good-governance, transparency and accountability as it would cover all possible areas including e-learning, e-education, e-health and e-agriculture.
The plan would help promote collaboration, digitization and innovation in both traditional socio-economic sectors and new emerging technologies, the minister added. Anusha Rehman said the government has set a mission of accelerated digitization to expand knowledge based economy and spur economic growth. To achieve the objective, technology parks will also be set up in different cities. Forty five acres of land has been acquired at Chak Shahzad to establish IT park in Islamabad.
Feasibility of the project will be ready by January. She said universal telecenters will be set up to provide e-services to the people at their doorsteps. Addressing on the occasion, Korea Ambassador to Pakistan Dr Song Jong-hwan said both Pakistan and Korea enjoy stronger relations, but there is a need to further improve them in different fields including Information Technology.
"E-Government Workshop 2014" will benefit Pakistan a lot with regards to formulation of an E-Government Master Plan. E-Governance is growing need of society and it should be appreciated that Pakistan has decided to adopt this futuristic concept already, he added.
He further said that 2014 has been a very special year that marked a new stage in the Pak-Korea relationship as in January the Speaker of the National Assembly of Korea visited Pakistan.
In April, the Korean Prime Minister visited Pakistan. Both were the highest level Korean officials to ever visit Pakistan. In October Anusha Rahman visited Korea. In November, "Korea Week" was celebrated in Islamabad to commemorate the growing links between Pakistan and Korea. And now we are seeing Pak-Korea co-operation in the IT sector.
IT is a major driver of growth. IT accounts for 11% of Korean GNP and 30% of Korean exports, which are more than half a trillion dollars. Thus, NIPA plays a leading role in Korea, Ambassador added. Vice President (NIPA) Deuk Jung Kim said that e-Governance brings a significant change in the working culture, behaviour, and environment and said that NIPA (Korea) will not only support in preparation of the master plan but will continue their support during the implementation of e-Governance programs.
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