KARACHI, May 27: The city government has established a state-of-the-art ‘IT Main Nerve Centre’ at the Civic Centre, which will provide centralized IT services to all the 18 town offices and later on to UC offices. This virtual private network will provide web-based application support in a secure manner to hundreds of city government staff spread across the city with expected expansion to thousands of users in the future.

This was said at a meeting held on Friday under the chairmanship of the City Nazim, Niamatullah Khan, at Civic Centre to review the progress of IT projects.

The meeting was attended by EDO IT Mushtaq Hussain Rizvi, EDO Revenue Muhammad Wasim, DOs Mumtaz-ul-Haq, Khalid Fahim, Muhammad Abdul Nasir, Kamal Ahmed Siddique and DO Local Taxes Masood Alam.

It was further said that an Itanium-based HP main server had been installed to cater to Karachi’s e-government information technology needs. The latest operation system – Linux Red Hat – had also been installed, the first such Linux installation on Itanium processors in Pakistan.

Besides, a powerful Oracle 10 kg database had been installed and made operational. This too was the first installation of its kind in Pakistan.

The Installed LAN comprises 192 nodes spread over 10 floors of the Civic Centre building covering offices such as that of the city nazim and DCO secretariats, all EDO offices, and offices of the land department, land recovery, land revenue, MPGO, advertisement, etc.

About four online bank collection counters have also been set up to cater to city govt’s challan processing needs.

Towns and UCs will be connected to the IT Nerve Centre through broadband connectivity to cater to the present needs.

State-of-the-art firewall and CISCO routers and switches have been installed, which would boost the city govt’s needs. Unbranded Pentium IV PC’s and the latest thin clients and workstation would be used.

The city nazim observed that it was relatively easy to set up an IT infrastructure; however, even the best IT infrastructure was useless without comprehensive business applications for it to utilize.

The EDO (IT), Mushtaq Hussain Rizvi, informed the meeting that for the purpose, comprehensive multiple software application projects were initiated two years ago, which were in the final stages and were ready for implementation.

He also informed the city nazim that the city govt had developed a comprehensive land management application, which covered all areas. The pilot data was linked to the master plan information, so that only plots present in the approved master plan for Karachi were considered valid.

Transaction on plots would follow city govt’s processing with each part handled by an authorized city govt officer. Challan’s would be prepared by computer and paid at authorized branches connected to the central service. This would greatly improve public service and improve city govt revenues.

At present, the master plan data for various Karachi Schemes is being entered into the computer. Live operations would start as soon as user training is completed for city govt and bank staff, and work stations are installed at all key locations.

The EDO IT informed the nazim that payroll and personal information system of over 100,000 officers and staff in all city govt offices would be computerized and managed.

He added that it was a major task to maintain accurate personal record of all employees, and to handle their pay disbursement, promotion, retirement and pension issue.

Monthly payroll disbursement through computer for authenticated and budgeted staff would start shortly, it was said. This would be followed by computerization of provident fund, pension and other human resource information.

Moreover, a comprehensive new city govt portal was in its final stages of development. It has been designed to provide all current and historical information about Karachi in one place.

It would caution tourist information business opportunities in Karachi, city projects that have been completed, in progress, and planned, KCR projects progress, maps, bus routes, health and medical information, hotel, foreign missions, etc. Besides, it would have a special section on the City Council Secretariat—PPI