Open Letter: A guide to rethink our National Information Technology ICT/IT Focus
Fouad Bajwa
responsibility for our future.” - George Bernard Shaw
Open Letter: A guide to rethink our National Information Technology ICT/IT Focus
What happens when Children, Adults, Senior Citizens, Civil Society,
Academia and all the national trade and business associations get
together to make a national ICT/IT strategy, well yes of course, they
work wonders and you will find that out in the link to a report given
below titled Digital Britain - Building Britain's Digital Future.
For us, since we have not been able to come up with one after year
2002, due to the lack of capability or capacity in order to evolve
with appropriate participation and consensus oriented strategies, may
be looking around the world might help us positively. Digital Britain
may also be used as an ICT guide to help us rethink our national level
Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) / Information Technology
(IT) focus and evolve it to bring it in-line with the Knowledge
Economies of the world. Though it isn't the best set of policy and
strategic directions in terms of a pro-people decision making
initiative but it does allow some food for thought for bringing
wonderful changes to the perceived norms in the developing world. Let
this act as a benchmark to understand where the global Knowledge and
Innovation Based Economies are headed as well as a reference guide
for all of us that consider watching the developed world is a good
guide:
Digital Britain
http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/6216.aspx
For some, this might be a eye opener as it defies the many claims we
have been hearing from or IT/ICT Industry leaders. Tsk, tsk....
--
Regards.
--------------------------
Fouad Bajwa
@skBajwa
Answering all your technology questions
http://www.askbajwa.com
http://twitter.com/fouadbajwa
Shaharyar Khan
Pakistan is really in need of. PSEB like institutions must undergo big
reforms it should be more than "export board"
Networked Readiness Index (NRI) released by World Economic Forum
measures the impact of ICT (Information and Communication
Technologies) on the competitiveness of Nations In year 2003-2004
Pakistan NRI Ranked 76th, In next year 2004-05 it remarkably improved
from 76 to 63.
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Networked_Readiness_Index
Pakistan ranking in NRI dramatically falls from 63 in 2004-05 to 89 in
2007-08. According to the latest ICT raking report Pakistan is doing
no better than Egypt, Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Out of
total 122 countries Pakistan ranked 89th this year which shows that
Pakistan ICT is in reverse gear.
Pakistan ranking in NRI dramatically falls from 63 in 2004-05 to 89 in
2007-08. According to the latest ICT raking report Pakistan is doing
no better than Egypt, Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Out of
total 122 countries Pakistan ranked 89th this year which shows that
Pakistan ICT is in reverse gear.
Similarly E-readiness index is also not encouraging, since there is
strong positive correlation between NRI and E-readiness we should not
expect Pakistan doing good on this front as well. E-readiness measures
the ability to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to
develop one's economy and to foster one's welfare. This index is
calculated by world Bank, Economic Intelligence Unit.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-readiness
In 2003 Pakistan stood at 57 then it slipped to 64 this year. 2006 was
worst year ever when Pakistan loss its ranking to 67 (lowest ). Total
70 countries Participated in this race. This is merely not a relative
index in broader sense it virtually represents all levels of Global
digital divide which is often result of low income and low quality
Education and various other factors.
PSEB and IT ministry has badly failed to improve IT sector of
Pakistan. For Instance OSRC (Open Source resource Center) a department
of PSEB is supposed to promote open source, is doing direct
competition with other businesses. PSEB offers training programs at
cheap price and quality which hurts other companies in training
market. PSEB has bigger role to play rather then acting like just an
other IT company. In this regard PSEB role should be “awareness
campaign” but not “direct knowledge transfer” or it should be
“Training of Trainers” to build capacity rather than going direct to
public and offer training at cheap. Its role must be as regulator,
facilitator, policy maker and capacity building institute. When I say
“bigger role” I expect PSEB doing things at Government policy making
and decision making levels. Just to give an example I would like to
mention open-source policies at Govt level in other countries.
Source: Government Policy toward Open Source Software - http://
www.aei.brookings.org/publications/abstract.php?pid=296
Govt must reform tri-cycle it means 1-Govt itself 2- education which
provides raw material for industry 3. Industry itself and marketing
industry worldwide.
regards,
Rao Khan
Nethawk (pvt) Ltd
www.nethawk.com.pk
On Jul 8, 10:08 am, Fouad Bajwa <fouadba...@gmail.com> wrote:
> * “We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the
> responsibility for our future.” - George Bernard Shaw
>
> Open Letter: A guide to rethink our National Information Technology ICT/IT Focus
>
> What happens when Children, Adults, Senior Citizens, Civil Society,
> Academia and all the national trade and business associations get
> together to make a national ICT/IT strategy, well yes of course, they
> work wonders and you will find that out in the link to a report given
> below titled Digital Britain - Building Britain's Digital Future.
>
> For us, since we have not been able to come up with one after year
> 2002, due to the lack of capability or capacity in order to evolve
> with appropriate participation and consensus oriented strategies, may
> be looking around the world might help us positively. Digital Britain
> may also be used as an ICT guide to help us rethink our national level
> Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) / Information Technology
> (IT) focus and evolve it to bring it in-line with the Knowledge
> Economies of the world. Though it isn't the best set of policy and
> strategic directions in terms of a pro-people decision making
> initiative but it does allow some food for thought for bringing
> wonderful changes to the perceived norms in the developing world. Let
> this act as a benchmark to understand where the global Knowledge and
> Innovation Based Economies are headed as well as a reference guide
> for all of us that consider watching the developed world is a good
> guide:
>
Fouad Bajwa
Very insightful and detailed information sharing. Totally agree with
you and I was at the 12th Session of the Commission on Science and
Technology at the UN Office in Geneva and trust me, even though I
stimulated and launched panellist discussions on Mobile Technology,
Convergence and Social Networks, I didn't have much to talk about my
own region.
Shaharyar Khan
btw. latest NRI even got worse year 2009 index shows Pakistan further
lose 8-9 points it ranking was 89th in 2007-8 now it is 98th in year
2009.
Countries like Peru, Nigeria Gambia, The Namibia, Mongolia,
Syria,Honduras,Venezuela, Kenya have over taken Pakistan in this
race.
Cannot we just do better then even Kenya ?
Faisal Khan
Whilst Rao has certainly shared something worthy of reading, I must also ask the readers to question as to how such indices are compiled. The exact formula, and more over the source of the data which is being plugged back into the formula to come to the rating.
The NRI is controversial in many aspects... and I quote:
"Conclusion
The NRI covers many dimensions of ICT development in a country. However, as the above review demonstrates, a number of extraneous variables have been added that do not necessarily shed any light on ICT environment, readiness or usage. Furthermore, a number of ICT indicators that may have added greater robustness to the measure are missing from the composite Index. The above critique may detract from the effectiveness of the Index but does not call into question its credibility. What weakens the credibility of the NRI is the non-transparent manner in which the authors report the sources of the data and the methodology that was followed to collect the raw data. Since the raw data for a number of indicators are based on perception surveys that are conducted by one of the partner organizations, it is difficult for any other entity to replicate the NRI."
Source: http://www.regulateonline.org/content/view/823/74/1/2/
Faried Nawaz
> I can only speak from the IP viewpoint, bandwidth rates are really low
> compared to the region and the countries you have cited (so please
> don't go on complaining further), local loop/metro connectivity
> options are getting stronger by the day.
Bandwidth rates from where to where?
Last month, I asked an ISP in Lahore for colocation rates. They wanted
$100/month to colocate a 1U (not unreasonable -- they provide security,
generator power, etc), and $300/month for 1 Mbit. I have a big problem
with the latter figure, because from all the log file analysis and
Google Analytics data I've collected, a little more than 97% of my main
site's visitors are from inside Pakistan.
I accept that because my needs are special (large database, application
not written in PHP or ASP.Net), I need to pay extra for hosting my
sites. I need to colocate a server, or use a VPS, and I'm willing to
pay for that. I just don't understand why I have to pay so much for
internal traffic.
A lot of people talk about local content, and keeping traffic in the
country, but this is the reality: it's prohibitively expensive to host
locally. And yet, people *DO* need to host locally: my main reason for
wanting to move the sites here is latency: I want something lower than
280-300ms. Even with all the caching tricks I do, I cannot make the
site seem fast if it takes at least half a second or so between clicks
and responses.
I know people who've tried buying cheap hosting at various local ISPs to
serve static content (setting up their own content distribution
networks). It didn't work out as well as they'd hoped.
Faried.
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