LAHORE, Aug 21: The ministry of science and technology has directed the governments of Punjab and Sindh to speed up projects to set up model IT districts in the two provinces.

The Punjab has selected Sialkot to make a fully automated e-district while Sindh has selected Karachi for the purpose.

The ministry has directed both the provinces to prepare PC-1s of model districts and submit them to the IT and Telecom Division for obtaining federal funds for the project.

The ministry has also convened a meeting in this regard on Thursday (today) in Islamabad to discuss the strategy to be adopted for promoting IT in districts.

The meeting is also expected to review the IT plans/projects of the provincial governments and discuss the priority areas. The meeting will also set deadlines for submission of PC-1s and related issues. It will also identify the support which may be available from the provinces that are already ahead as well as from Islamabad.

The Punjab IT department has outlined a project worth Rs75 million to make Sialkot a fully automated e-district. The project will take three years to implement.

The Sialkot Model IT District will include office automation, networking, portal for the district and other applications for improving public service delivery like complaints handling on the electronic media.

In the first year, the IT department will computerize land and revenue record, registration deeds, domiciles, arms licenses and motor vehicle registration. The department will also bring on computers the employees profile, government transportation, accommodation budget, the ADP and crime monitoring and networking of government offices. IT will also be introduced in the Sialkot industry and linked to the Export Promotion Bureau to boost exports.

In the meanwhile, the IT department will also work on a project to develop an “intranet” for Punjab. Currently, the department will take Sialkot district component as a pilot project to be extended to the other districts. The department is also planning an intranet project for all government departments in Lahore.

However, sources in the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) alleges that the government was going to take a wrong step. They said the government would waste millions of rupees as the department was not following the software standards prepared by the PITB while working on the IT projects. They claimed that the projects executed without following the software standards would not have application in the other districts. The sources also claimed that the automation of an e-district would be requiring between 30 to 40 different computer applications. They suggested that the software should have universal applicability and reliability to save the cost on similar exercises in the other districts.

When contacted, Punjab IT department secretary Saeed Ahmad Alvi said the department was already following the international software standards to outsource public sector IT projects.

Alvi said the PITB had not yet finalized the software standards. In a recent ADP review meeting, he said, it was recorded that the software standards which were supposed to be finalized and submitted to the IT department by the end of June were yet to be finalized and submitted.

He said he had asked the PITB to submit software standards and launch them on its website to seek response from all concerned. He said the IT department had itself approved the software standards preparation project with a view to acquiring a standard document to prepare a request for proposal and devise standards for software measurement.