Information Technology Department

IT Department was established on May 2001 with the name of Information Technology, Information, Tourism and Culture Department, letter-on, It has been bifurcated in 2004 with the name of IT & Information Department after that, It has been further bifurcated in 2008.  It is in the mandate of IT department to carryout goad Research in the field of Science and Information Technology and introduces the concept of digitalization in the Province. The Department carries its main concept with the idea to:

  • Improve the research activities in Institutions.
  • Utilize Information Technology for public benefit.
  • Advise Government Departments on IT use.
  • Scrutinize and monitor IT projects.
  • Guide the province in the modern era of Information Technology.
  • Introduce Information Technology in Educational Institutions

 

Functions

Following the National IT Policy and Action Plan, Balochistan Government is coordinating with the Ministry of IT & Telecommunication for identification and formulation of large scale IT projects. Balochistan IT department is mainly focusing on the development of human resource required for the realization e-government and the needed infrastructure with automation of business processes. Keeping in focus the department’s mission, the following development projects in IT sector have been initiated:

E-Government

Involves the department of public sector service capacity across a number of areas a number of areas, including enterprise development and regulation, law enforcement and the courts, education, social service, taxation, citizenship development, and basic service such as utilities or recreational programs. Electronic government in this sense focuses on the basic ability of citizen and enterprise leader to communicate more effectively with the hey Government officials to communicate with each other and to speed up the processing of work, particularly work that involves transactions (e.g. pay bills, fees, taxes), the need to manipulate data, and to deliver actual services (e.g. instruction, licenses, counseling, etc) online. While electronic government in this sense obviously involve new funding represents a relatively minor challenge compared to the challenges of developing new hiring, training and management regimes. These human resource aspects of information technology development, in particular, have been shown to represent an increasingly large proportion of the total cost of developing these new technologies. That is as the cost of the hardware and software declines the focus of the management needs to be on issues such as increasing the computer literacy among staff members, developing a technology-friendly organizational culture, increasing the tolerance for experimentation and failure, indentifying opportunities for inter-agency and intergovernmental collaboration and balancing the supports for technology among the various functions of government. Balochistan province is keenly pursuing Federal Government initiative for realizing-e-government. Due to lack of infrastructure and readily availability of data hampers and delays routine business. Balochistan Government is of the view that if possible e-government experience of developed countries may be looked into so that time and resources can be saved. Few priorities of Balochistan Government are as listed below:

 

Human Resource Development:

Balochistan Government is taking all necessary measures to make the availability of all possible service to citizen using ICT. It is reality that Balochistan Government being a under developed province and underdeveloped is lacking financial and human resource. Which is a major cause in hampering IT Promotion and Development The top priority of Balochistan Government would be to train the Government IT professional and other related officers in preparation of e-government strategies, policies for a smooth transition from a manual to automated business procedures. Balochistan Government is in desire need of professional expertise in field of security, Communication, GIS, Software Engineering Process Reengineering, IT Legislation, etc. IT Department is striving that on job professionals of Balochistan Government be trained in all IT related latest technology in order make the e-government dream come true.

  • Realize e-government in the province of Balochistan for enhancing internal efficiencies and improving public service delivery.
  • Create an IT enable public service sector work environment.
  • Flourish IT Culture and build capacity.
  • Bring all stakeholder on board, consult and work with them to indentify / assess the needs and service areas in each department.
  • Prioritize the project to be implemented with the focus on sustainability through ownership of project by the respective department / district government.
  • Deal with the requirement of system irrigation, conformity of standard and development of public key infrastructure (PKI), ensure security of data, create archives and data warehouse and bring about a revolution of online service culture in the society.
  • Implement IT policy / IT Action Plan in the province of Balochistan.
  • Evaluate current rules and regulation of department of department / agencies of Government of the Balochistan and indentify those rules and policies that limit their ability to bring their service on the internet.
  • Devise appropriate standards and safeguard for managing and securing electronic data is collected, used, share and retained in public sector agencies.

Infrastructure Development:

Promotion and development of IT in Government setup cannot be achieved without the installation of all required infrastructure. Balochistan Government is working to provide the require IT infrastructure for the realization of e-government and promotion of IT culture in the all Government setups. District Government plays a vital role in provision of services at the grass rood level. Balochistan is keen in promotion e-government initiative in the entire districts in order facilities citizens residing in far flung and deprived areas

Business Process Re-engineering and automation of Government agencies:

Manually expediting official procedures mostly costs lot of time and resources to exchequers. A conversion from manual to automated system is hefty task and involves huge changes in working environment and require high level professional and change management expertise

AGRP-B Interventions

Some of the Interventions of AGRP-B in IT Department are as follows: