Body formed to promote IT sector

The government has constituted a committee on emerging technologies to promote growth in IT sector with President Dr Arif Alvi as its chief patron.

According to a notification of the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, a copy of which is available with Business Recorder, the committee comprises members from both public and private sectors. Dr Arif Alvi, President of Pakistan, is going to be the chief patron of the committee while Dr Khalid Maqbool, Minister for IT and Telecom, will be the chairperson of the committee. Federal Secretary Ministry of IT & Telecom will be the secretary of the committee.

According to terms of reference, the committee will work in areas of IT sector including artificial intelligence and robotics, cloud computing and networking, blockchain, distributed ledger, crypto currencies and digital payments, software, Silicon chip design and manufacturing, broadband and internet of things, digitalization of government, including digital identification machines and voting technology, cyber tools and apps particularly in education, health, population planning, biotechnology, e-commerce, e-education and e-tourism, virtual and augmented reality, cyber security, data ownership, data security and legislation and any other matters connected to emerging technologies.

The committee composition is as President of Pakistan (chief patron), Federal Minister of IT and Telecom (chairperson), federal secretary (seized with subject of IT), MoIT (member / secretary) and members included provincial secretary Punjab, provincial secretary Sindh, provincial secretary KPK, provincial secretary GB, provincial secretary Balochistan, provincial secretary AJK, director general (technical), ISI, CEO NITB, Tania Aidrus, Professor Saad Ahmad Qazi, Ayub Khan, Azhar Ziaur Rehman, Azhar Rizvi, Salman Ansari, Shahzad Shahid, Asif Peer, Khursheed Shah, Suleman Mehdi, Naeem Ashraf Rana, Hassan Syed, Syed Feroze Shah and Dr Ali Ahmed.