ISLAMABAD (SPECIAL REPORT )
One of the biggest hurdles to the e-governance system has now been cleared with the availability of the Data Center possible by a large telecom company without any cost to the government. This development has been attributed to the hard work done by Minister of State Anusha Rehman. With the availability of data center made possible the work on e-governance is now underway. This system will allow the Aiwan-E-Sadar, Prime Minster Secretariat and 28 ministries and other important government institutions to be connected and bought online.
For this reason, the Ministry of IT and Telecom has transferred its operations after effort of four weeks to e-governance system whereas the Prime Minister Secretariat will go online with next three to four weeks. After which Ministry of Planning and Development and National Assembly will go online. To ensure that all these four pivotal institution are linked together a data centre has been made where all are connected to each other. This has resulted in the culmination of a project that was started in 2004 and has become a reality in 2013.
It should be stated here that Anusha Rehman, Minister of State didn’t take account of the red tape found in bureaucracy and was determined to get the data centre running. The Government of Pakistan is not liable to pay for the data centre which is remarkable. This is however a temporary arrangement which can be easily made permanent. According to one reliable source in Ministry of Telecom the project that was started in 2004 will not see any kind of financial support from the government. To complete this project 44 million rupees were allocated out which 32 million has been spent. The Ministry of Telecom had recently started to work on the project by the help of a private company which assured to finish the project in the spirit of patriotism.
In the initial phase four key government institutions will be linked together after which the rest of the 24 ministries and provinces will then be connected to the Federal Government. Agreement for this has already been done. The urgent need for the e-government was the data centre which was ignored. Minister of State Anusha Rehman had appealed to telecom companies in this regard. This appeal was answered by a big telecom company which has helped in offering services for a data centre without any cost.
There have been reservations about lack of security when it comes to protection of information and sensitive government files. To answer these reservations a Ministry of Telecom’s responsible officer said that numerous banks and an important government institution have used a third party for creating and running a data centre. These third party contractors have the required expertise and man power to assure security of the information. He said that to further secure the e government system it will be separated from the main internet system of the country whereas data back up is also being made.