24 April 2004	Saturday	03 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

ISLAMABAD, April 23: The information technology ministry has launched a pilot project worth Rs37 million to train 4,000 government servants in open source software.

This was stated by Information Technology Minister Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari here on Friday. He was presiding over a high- level meeting of the ministry officials and heads of the attached departments.

Mr Leghari said the ministry would sponsor the project under which training would be imparted to 4,000 employees in Linux operating system, Open Office and other application software while 200 system administrators would be trained in Linux.

He said the training programme would be arranged in Islamabad, all provincial headquarters and Muzaffarabad (AJK).

The duration of the course would be approximately five weeks for end users and eight weeks for system administrators. Half of the intake in these courses would be from the private sector while the rest from government departments.

He said government servants with pay scale BPS-5 and above were eligible for the training to be provided free of charge. The participants from private sector will pay 10 per cent of the fees while the rest would be paid by the government. The only eligibility requirement is matric level education for end users training on open source software.

For systems software training, the minimum requirement is graduation with one to two years experience of working on computers. The minister informed the meeting that work relating to pre- qualification/selection of partner training institutes for imparting training had already been completed while nominations of the trainees would be invited through newspapers and from government departments.

Arrangements for the placement of candidates in different training institutes are already underway and the training is planned to start by the end of April 2004, he said. Mr Leghari pledged that on successful implementation of this project and depending upon the response and interest of the government servants and public, a major follow-up project of training would be launched.

The Pakistan Computer Bureau (PCB), a subsidiary of the ministry, will organize, arrange and monitor training activities to ensure proper quality of training. The minister said selling of software CDs without proper licencing was a violation of copyright regulations but without a strict enforcement of copyright laws, there were almost no incentives for software developers to develop new software.

This is one of the major reasons for low software development activity within the country, he said, adding that it was the duty of the government to provide some alternative solutions for the people and organizations who could not afford the purchase of expensive proprietary software.

He informed the meeting that in 2005, WTO regulations were expected to be enforced and as a result it would become mandatory for WTO members to use licenced software. This will exert a profound impact not only on the expenditure of the general software users but also incur a great burden on national exchequer, he added.

The Pakistani government was not the only government promoting the use of open source software. A large number of countries and governments were already doing the same. The promotion of open source software as an alternative to proprietary software would bring massive revenue savings for the country besides providing alternative software to the common man who could not afford expensive proprietary software's, he said.

The open source software's have a large number of software authors and beta testers. This makes software testing and refinement processes faster and better. The open source software's are free from two standpoints.

Firstly the open source software's consumer is free to modify the system and do anything he wishes with it. Secondly, acquiring open source software's does not necessarily require any cash outlay.

Linux which is an open source operating system comes with full networking capabilities, a large variety of programmes, utilities and development tools. Moreover, Linux is reliable and one of the most stable operating systems. This is due to the fact that Linux was written by programmers who were writing it for other programmers and not for corporate systems.