The Approach Paper obtained by Daily Times here on Wednesday recognises the key role of knowledge in economic growth and prosperity of Pakistan. It reveals that the government has trying to enhance access to higher education, improve its quality and make it relevant to national needs by developing university-industry linkages in next five years. Together with heavy investment, capacity of the government and other institutions in formulation and implementation of science, technology and innovation policies would be enhanced to ensure high and sustained economic growth.
According to the plan public-private partnership would be explored to promote higher education in the country and creation of research and development culture. Knowledge clusters and innovation centres would also be established. Improve quality regime and promote exports through development of legal and institutional framework, up-gradation of national quality infrastructure including accreditation of laboratories and protection of consumer rights. The government also planned to launch satellite development programme.
The paper further revealed that Information & Communication Technology (ICT) was considered an essential technology for economic development and social uplift of the people. The nascent ICT has made phenomenal progress in the telecom sub-sector by attracting huge international investments. However, the domestic usage of IT has not grown that fast. The challenge is to rapidly expand the domestic usage of IT by introducing citizen centric services in local/regional languages, provision of low-cost locally manufactured computers for the public and establishing trust-worthy internationally practiced mechanisms for encouraging business-to-business (B2B) and government-to-business (G2B) transactions.
The challenges of ICT mainly centered around improving quality of IT education, increasing IT exports, expanding e-government and e-commerce and fostering computer hardware industry. These challenges could be transformed into an opportunity by addressing the core issue of providing ‘universal access’ to education and ‘opportunities for learning’ computer skills needed in various professions. This would act as a catalyst for poverty alleviation and reducing the digital divide, thus helpful in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The main focus of the IT strategy of the plan would be vocational/technical skills training in ICTs with emphasis on international certifications. Transition of government departments from simple office automation to ‘inter connected’ automated workflow.
The paper envision to strengthen software industry by encouraging international brands of Pakistani products and attract foreign investment and transfer of technology for manufacturing of computer hardware, the paper revealed.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Ijaz Kakakhel
Quelle/Source: Daily Times, 11.06.2009
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