KARACHI, April 13: An overall national Information Technology programme is being initiated in the country and this would be implemented during the next two to three years. This was stated by the federal minister for information technology, Owais Ahmed Khan Leghari, while talking to APP here on Tuesday.

He said it would be a huge project and the costing part of it would be determined in the next three months. The minister said the first phase of such a plan that pertains to infrastructure has been approved by the ministry.

He said this has now been referred to the Ecnec for necessary approval. Owais Leghari stated that the entire ministries of the federal government would be linked through fibre and their processes would be automated and thus a "paperless government" would be brought to the fore.

He was of the opinion that because of the overall national IT programme, a great deal of demand for IT work would be created in this very sector.ast three decades.

Mr. Leghari said it is now being recognized as an important subject by the corporate sector in Pakistan and that disaster recovery or business continuity planning is increasingly being adopted as a critical part of overall Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) by many institutions.

The minister announced support for any such initiative that would enhance understanding of dependable and reliable systems. He said his ministry fully supports efforts by the private sector to introduce global best practices into the Pakistani marketplace.

Mr. Leghari also highlighted the incentives that the government is providing to attract companies to invest in Pakistan and added that we are ready to go extra mile to ensure that we provide the right environment.

He said that he had recently initiated a programme where the government would partially subsidize or even in some cases bear all the costs associated with training Pakistan specialists in areas that the company identifies.

The minister stated that we would be happy to bear the cost of training in disaster recovery and business continuity planning. He pointed out that already nearly 100 software companies in the country are ISO certified.

Mr. Leghari said that even though bandwidth rates have been brought down drastically, he has asked the new management at PTCL to look into how these could be brought down even further.

The Chairman of the National Telecommunication Corporation, Rear Admiral Shahid Farooq, was of the view that protecting information from corruption, ensuring maximum uptime, consolidation, facilitating fast information restoration and protecting sensitive, confidential information electronically is quickly becoming a matter of doing business in the digital age. -APP