Pakistan to host Asian IT ministers’ moot

Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: The participants of the third IT Minister’s Summit that concluded in Bahrain on Saturday chose Pakistan to host over 30 ministers of information technology from the Asian and Middle Eastern region in early 2006.

“Information sharing is just the first step in developing closer relationships between countries,” an official stated quoted Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari, federal minister for IT and telecom as saying.

“However, in order for this sharing of information to materialize into something more meaningful, we must devise mechanisms that will allow us to collaborate on projects that are of mutual benefit to the emerging economies of the region,” he added.

Pakistan’s proposals in this regard, to set up a permanent secretariat to manage the annual summit and to implement the action items that have been identified in the Bahrain Declaration, were well received and a committee has been formed to follow up on these proposals.

Dr Aamir Matin, managing director of the Pakistan Software Export Board, commented that a number of the countries at the Summit showed immense interest in IT solutions in the areas of homeland security, such as machine readable passports, border control systems, and computerized national ID cards. “Since this was a summit at which all the IT ministers of Asian countries were present, it was but natural for the discussions to centre around e-government solutions,” he maintained, adding “Pakistani IT solutions developed by NADRA and others are an ideal low cost answer to the requirements of countries in the region.”

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