October 25, 2001	Thursday	Shaba'an 7, 1422

ISLAMABAD, Oct 24: Ministry of Science & Technology has set up a mechanism to monitor the execution of all projects funded by it to ensure their implementation in letter and spirit.

According to official source, the system has also been evolved to enforce financial discipline to ensure that money is spent as per allocation in the PC-I. The ministry will ensure that tendering and all other process are fully transparent and according to the government rules and regulations.

The project office would be located in the ministry. An amount of Rs25 million has been allocated for the project.

The ministry had approved around 60 projects in 2000-01 for an aggregate amount of Rs2 billion. Similarly in 2001-02 it is expecting to get new projects of Rs2 billion or more. To get the most effective utilization of this fund a need for a project monitoring mechanism was felt.

The regular staff of the ministry reviews the project plans and attempts to get the relevant data from the executing agencies. However, there is no specific monitoring unit in the ministry to make on the spot assessment of the implementation of the project.

The project monitoring team would consist of eight project managers with experience of the IT industry. The team would work under the supervision of the technical staff of the ministry, who would provide overall project management and control. The project managers would report to the respective Director (Telecom, IT, HRD, or Legal) who would guide them in the project management work.

It has been decided that each project manager would be allocated a set of projects for which he/she would in consultation with the executing agency prepare the implementation plan and then track the progress according to the plan, which would correspond to the approved PC-I.

In addition to the full time project managers, the ministry will engage subject matters experts within our even outside the country (where local expertise is not available) for evaluation and assessment.

Eight project managers will be required in the first year of implementation. The project managers could be IT professionals with project experience or business graduates with IT experience.—APP