KARACHI, Dec 2: The city government’s information technology project to streamline working of different departments and to provide people an easy access to information concerning them does not seem to be completed in the scheduled time due to various reasons.
An official of the city government, requesting anonymity on Tuesday, said that the city government launched an IT project named “Setting Up IT Infrastructure for CDGK” in May 2002 to interlink different departments and their working by connecting them through networking so that functions of different departments could be streamlined to get maximum output.
The project includes land management system, personal information system, pay role, birth and death certificate system, trade license and advertisement system.
“The main reason is the inordinate delay by the provincial government to release its share of funds as per agreed formula of funding the project,” he said.
He said that the IT project was a part of federal government’s policy to introduce e-government system in country and both federal and provincial governments would fund this project. It was agreed that 75 per cent would be funded by the federal government while the rest by provincial government.
The official said that federal government had been releasing its share of funds during the last one and half years as per demand of project. However, the government of Sindh is reluctant to release its share of amount for the project, he added.
A number of letters were forwarded to provincial finance department, however, no positive outcome had been achieved so far, he said. Need for the release of funds intensified, as the department had to procure hardware worth million of rupees for establishing proper infrastructure of information technology in city government.
He maintained that the federal government policy was very appreciative in this regard and there seemed no hurdles on part of the federal government due to its commitment to promote and improve IT sector in the whole country.
Shortage of professional and technical staff in this field was cited to be another reason for slow pace of the project. However, no action had been taken to remove this hurdle, he said. — PPI
