President Alvi terms IT sector game-changer for country’s economy

President Dr Arif Alvi said that the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector is a game changer for the national economy. He emphasized the need to bring about a paradigm shift in ideas, attitudes besides improving intellectual and innovation capabilities among the youth.

Addressing the launch ceremony of Web 3.0 at the Punjab Information Technology Council here on Friday, he said that there is a need to accelerate the speed of making solid policies. He said such policies should not be rolled back by any change in government. He emphasized on finding out-of-the-box solutions to the existing and emerging issues and challenges.

He said: “We can earn US$15 billion per year in the IT sector within two to three years”. The president said: “There is an urgent need for our political, administrative and intellectual capital to fully focus on artificial intelligence in public and private sectors, while adopting at a much faster pace than the current one, technologies such as blockchain, cloud computing, internet of things, cyber security and cyber defence, virtual and augmented reality and quantum computing to bring the delivery of services and quality of products and services at par with the international standards.”

He said that the world was entering the next level of defense system, which was cyber security and cyber defense, adding that the war between Russia and Ukraine amply demonstrated the power of cyber security and cyber defense to improve the delivery of public services and communications. paralyzed. connectivity of the competitors area. He said in terms of generating new and creative ideas, Pakistan is second to none, but the need of the hour was information and data sources.

Dr Arif Alvi said that the current level of human resources and technology is not capable of handling the enormous data generated around the world and added that “Around 80 million trained human resources are required in the cyber field alone if we able to train our human resource. in this sector alone. We can overcome the unemployment issue in the country and provide high paying jobs to our youth”.

He said: “This can be achieved by rethinking and resetting our entire education system into a mode capable of providing quality education and skills to our youth in the shortest possible time through the use of online and hybrid mode and by extending its reach to masses in such a way that no candidate is denied or denied his right to get education and skills.”

The President said that the whole world is looking at Pakistan because of our youth bulge; educated and skilled youths were needed to fuel the rapidly developing world of Information Technology, empowered by artificial intelligence and quantum computing to leap to the next level in the fourth industrial revolution. He said: “If we fail to develop this precious human resource in an accelerated manner, it is feared that the uneducated youth bulge will become a burden on the national economy.”

The President said: “We have produced doctors, engineers and other professionals by expending scarce national resources, but unfortunately these highly trained and quality human resources have been exported to other countries, where they have contributed immensely to the growth and development of their host countries and at the same time depriving our country of this precious human resource resulting in an acute shortage in almost all sectors of national life”.

He said this trend should be reversed by creating enabling conditions in the country for their willing retention by promoting online sales and marketing of the talent of our human resource and products and services, which will ultimately improve the current status of our prestige in the community of the nations.

Dr Alvi said that the Prime Minister’s Digital Skills Development Program and such programs could be replicated as quickly as possible to exponentially increase the number of skilled professionals and impart digital skills to the youth.

He said, “There is an urgent urgency to fully develop our ICT sector and multiply our IT exports by overcoming the lack of educated and trained human resources, the overall ease of doing business and the IT ecosystem of the country, by embracing innovation, and adopting forward-looking policies”.

The world was rapidly moving towards quantum computers that were millions of times faster than our existing most advanced supercomputers, he added.

He said, “We need to form a council to create a system to take up research and develop quantum computers and forge alliances and linkages with the R&D institutions for their adoption on a speedy basis.”

He said that the IT and artificial intelligence can revolutionize the health sector by creating chatbots, online and web-based help services, using conventional and social media to educate masses about the nature and spread of communicable and non-communicable diseases and promoting preventive treatment method to reduce the disease burden as Pakistan, with its scarce resources, was not in a position to provide curative treatment to its entire population.

The President called for the enhancement of cooperation and coordination between the federation and its constituent units to protect and promote the startup ecosystem, to bring women workforce and other skilled persons into a productive economic stream to support the fully exploit enormous business opportunities in national, regional and global markets. through physical and online marketing.