ISLAMABAD: National Assembly (NA) Speaker Asad Qaiser on Tuesday said digitisation would improve the working environment of parliament. “This is an era of paperless and digital-based official environment,” Mr Qaiser said while inaugurating a project, ‘Re-imagining the National Assembly of Pakistan with Google Workspace’s advanced productivity and collaboration tools’ in Parliament House.

The speaker said it was the first parliament in the region which had adopted Google Workspace to digitise work processes and enhance productivity and collaboration between its members. This was as per the prime minister’s vision of digital Pakistan under the ‘Office communication and productivity suite of applications for the National Assembly’ project.

Tech Valley, a local partner for Google Cloud in Pakistan, won the public tender with Google Workspace’s easy-to-use, secure and innovative digital productivity and collaboration tools.

Mr Qaiser appreciated the efforts of the team and said: “With the latest technology and tools being enabled in the National Assembly in the past few months, Google Workspace has been a significant addition that would assist members to be more efficient.”

Says parliament is first in region to adopt Google Workspace to enhance productivity and collaboration among its members

The chief executive officer of the Google Tech Valley stated that after the successful deployment of Google Workspace, a ‘Google Day’ was observed at the National Assembly to mark the important milestone of digitising the National Assembly’s back-end processes.

During the event, a live demonstration was given to all members to educate them on how to best leverage these tools to make their day-to-day operations more efficient.

CEO Tech Valley Umar Farooq said: “Multiple national and international teams have made sure that the productivity tools used by the National Assembly are completely secure and encrypted.”

He also said that Google Workspace provided an innovative, flexible and secure cloud-native solution for people and organisations to achieve more. Its suite of tools allowed users to collaborate from anywhere, anytime, he said, adding that the solution provided a custom email for the National Assembly and included applications like email, calendar, meet, chat, drive, docs, sheets, slides, forms, sites, and more.

Timothy Paolini, the head of APAC Region, Google, who flew into join the event, said: “More than three billion people worldwide use Google Workspace to learn, work and stay connected to those that matter to them. Where there’s been a fundamental shift in where and how we work, we’re proud to be supporting the National Assembly of Pakistan and empowering its members with the innovative and enterprise-grade tools they need to connect, create and collaborate flexibly and securely on any device – whether they are returning to the office, working from home, or serving citizens on the frontlines.”

He said with Google Workspace, local teams were expecting more efficient and effective communications. Moreover, with the elimination of unnecessary tasks, such as rotating files from one office to another or storing and retrieving critical documents from a physical location just to get feedback from teams, these digital tools were transforming the assembly’s traditional and time-consuming practices.

The Speaker Qaiser and Deputy Speaker Qasim Khan Suri also inaugurated a CCTV control room (security and surveillance) in the parliament.

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2022