ISLAMABAD, Jul 29 (APP): Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Professor Ahsan Iqbal said on Monday that the availability of authentic data and its judicious utilization was essential for any country to achieve its goals of development and prosperity.
“Today, data is driving a strategic revolution worldwide. It is crucial for any economy to prioritize data availability and utilization among its national objectives,” he said while addressing the “Dialogue on Data for Development: Enabling People-Centric Development Planning in Pakistan,” organized by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI).
The minister recalled that it was the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government which established the National Database Organization in the 1998 plan, at a time when the value of creating a citizen data bank was not widely recognized.
He noted that Pakistan became one of the first countries to establish a citizen data bank, which was now known as NADRA [National Database and Registration Authority].
He mentioned that during its various tenures, the PML-N government established the National Center for Excellence in Big Data and Cloud Computing, National Centers for Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, Applied Mathematics, Satellite Technology and Geographic Information System (GIS).
Additionally, he highlighted that the PML-N government distributed millions of laptops to youth in public and private universities to facilitate Internet access and enable online education, contributing to Pakistan becoming the third-largest freelancing country in the world.
Between 2013 and 2018, the minister said the PML-N government launched 3G and 4G networks, which drove the digital revolution in Pakistan, and also strengthened digital infrastructure by extending fiber optics from China.
He regretted that after 2018 there was no significant headway in the ‘journey to development’ due to the elements which caused hindrances in national development process.
On May 30 this year, Pakistan launched its second communication satellite with assistance from China, aimed at ensuring Internet availability in remote areas of the country.
The planning minister stressed the need to increase the country’s exports, which required authentic data, saying “The use of data is essential to transforming the country into a knowledge economy because data is the fuel of the knowledge economy.”