Teknords Swat : Admission open in Diploma in Information Technology

In this modern age of information technology, every sphere of life is on its way to be transformed into computer based systems. Diploma in information technology is a specialized certificate course to equip human resource from multiple departments and businesses with the technical and operational tools of this modern computer based technological systems. On one side it includes computer based Office automation while on the other side also have introduction to web page designing. It also includes database management systems and a preliminary course of accounts. Its a real opportunity for those who want to pursue jobs at different departments as the pre requisite for majority of jobs also include this diploma. Teknords college of science and technology offers this course of one year tenure in both its Mingora (Swat KPK) campus and Bisham  (Swat KPK) campus.

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Mourn of Foreign Qualified PhDs in Pakistan

“I have to spend two more years on an unwanted job that is killing my skills”, Dr. Shuja (fake name) said this with heartbreaking voice. During a university-related trip to his university I met him during a refreshment break. Shuja completed his PhD from a well reputed European university on HEC scholarship in Chemical Engineering. “My PhD is in alternative fuel and during thesis writing my two of research paper had been published in impact factor journals. I wanted to join the corporate sector where I could utilize and enrich my skills very well but I am teaching in an engineering university for three years.” I asked him why he is associated with the teaching and not joining energy sector. He said “there are no appropriate companies in Pakistan directly working in my area of specialization. I had many offers from abroad but according to my bonding with HEC I have to spend five years in Pakistan.” I tried to console him “teaching is also a prophetic job. You must think that you are training the generation”……. He looked at me with empty eyes and said “you are right. Teaching is a very good profession and I have taught during my PhD studentship as well but my skills are not made for teaching. I am getting beyond my original area of expertise. During teaching mostly you are out of touch to the real time solutions of current industry developments.” I advised him “so why don’t you discuss this problem to HEC that you are reaching beyond your field?” He smiled meaningfully and said “Sir my father’s property of eight million rupees is pawned in HEC so I am not in position to ague on HEC.”
After this conversation I started working on getting information on HEC’s scholarship system. This system was initiated by Dr. Attaurrehman back in 2003 and around 35,000 Pakistani students are studying in different countries on HEC scholarship. HEC has a budget for scholarship amount 800 million rupees. According to HEC statistics, 5934 scholars were awarded PhDs from world’s best universities funded by HEC but among all of them 126 scholars breached the HEC agreement to come back Pakistan and serving country. Due to this, HEC tightened the rules for awarding HEC scholarship for Pakistani students.
Among other rules and regulations, the candidates are required to submit the documents of their property worth at least 6 million rupees. “This scholarship is not for the poor students that HEC claims” Usman argued on it who has completed PhD from Australia and serving in another university in Pakistan “if you don’t have property of 6 million rupees who can’t qualify this scholarship” he added “and you can’t sale or transfer your property during three years of scholar’s PhD studentship and 5 years during serving Pakistan. This is very unfair because the family of such scholars is bound for eight years”. I replied to him “but you know HEC took this initiative because more than 126 PhDs got missing. The government spends millions of rupees on PhD programs and provide comfort to the scholar so this is their ethical responsibility to respect the obligation” he waited for a second and said “do you know most of students submit the properties of their parents, uncles, aunties of other close relatives? This obligation mostly suffers not the person who breaches the obligation but the family members who are bound for more than eight years… and mostly they are from the middle class.”
Usman also mentioned that corruption is all over the procedure of this system. The HEC asks for evaluation report by the Mukhtiarkar, an officer of board of revenue. They ask thousands of bribery for evaluation. I paid around 40 thousand rupees for actual price of my father’s property worth 10 million rupees. This is its market value but the Mukhtiarkar initially said to my father that the value of your property is 2 million only but after getting bribe he increased its value to 10 million rupees.
Hence this is not the discussion of corruption in the scholarship process but our motive is to express our serious concern about the wastage of world class researchers and academics in Pakistan.
The PhDs who are coming from abroad after completing their education are mostly related to engineering, technology and other areas of pure sciences but among most of them fewer can get the right jobs in Pakistan related to their expertise. What they can only get is a job in teaching at the universities. The HEC had a policy to appoint them in the public universities at around 130 thousand rupees per month salary but due to great influx of foreign qualified PhD, HEC softened the rule to serve in any private university as per university’s pay scale.
The matter of concern is their waste of genuine expertise. They are not primarily made for teaching. They can better serve the country if they go to the corporate sector in engineering, telecommunication, chemicals and pharmaceuticals but unfortunately our industry is not as mature enough as to carry this high talent. Consequently, after unsuccessful attempt to get into the industry these intellectuals go to universities and during five years of their job they leave behind the real time expertise and consequently the ever-growing new technology obsoletes this expertise.
As a part of academia, in my circle I noticed dozens of foreign qualified PhDs are working in different universities in Karachi and believe that same problem could be observed in other major cities. I personally know around 30 PhDs in Economics and Business Administration. They can serve the national economy and manage the national systems but their skills and expertise are unattended by the policy makers. They don’t have any plan to accommodate them in proper places. Our observation depicts that most of foreign qualified PhDs are working in academics with less motivation and suffering from the discomfited feelings. Undoubtedly the role of HEC in promoting PhDs from abroad is much appreciated but we should have right strategic plans and defined fields to fix them on right crown otherwise we will keep continue to waste our outstanding talent.

Dr Munir Hussain

Associate Professor/Director QEC at Mohammad Ali Jinnah University

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Pakistan successfully tests Babur Weapon System version – 2

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan: Pakistan on Wednesday conducted a successful test of an enhanced version of the indigenously developed Babur Cruise Missile, according to the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR).
The ISPR said that Babur Weapon System version – 2 incorporates advanced aerodynamics and avionics that can strike targets both at land and sea with high accuracy at a range of 700 kilometers.

It is a low flying, terrain hugging missile which carries certain stealth features and is capable of carrying various types of warheads.
Equipped with state of the art navigational technologies of Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) and all time Digital Scene Matching & Area Co-relation (DSMAC) which enables it to engage various type of targets with pinpoint accuracy even in the absence of GPS navigation. Babur Weapon System is an important force multiplier for Pakistan’s strategic defence.
Today’s launch was witnessed by the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) General Zubair Mahmood Hayat, senior officers from Strategic Plans Division, Strategic Forces, scientists and engineers of strategic organizations.
The CJCSC congratulated the scientists and engineers on achieving yet another milestone of great value and significance. He appreciated the technical prowess, dedication and commitment of scientists who contributed to the success of this launch.
Expressing his full confidence over the Strategic Command and Control System and the Strategic Forces’ operational preparedness, CJCSC stated that this test further strengthens Pakistan’s Deterrence Capability.
President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif have congratulated the scientists and engineers on successful conduct of today’s missile test.

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You know I do realize we are Still together

You know I do realize we are Still together but in a separate way, We still have things to stretch into, to cling to, and even though you read what I write without the mere reaction, I will still be writing ! Not only because writing is my way to express what I sometimes need to say, but also because Writing was the reason you and I fortunately have met.. 
Happy anniversary to our few years of indulged happiness !
One year ago we idolized talking day and night..

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Sindh Government Plans to Establish an IT City in Malir Named After Arfa Karim

The Sindh government is planning to develop an IT City in Malir – the Arfa Karim Information Technology (IT) City. This was stated by Dr. Sikandar Ali Shoro, Sindh Minister for Science and Technology on Wednesday.

In a meeting with members of Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), Dr. Sikandar proposed this project for the promotion and development of IT sector in Pakistan.

The proposed IT City will be named after one of the most famous Pakistanis in recent memory. Arfa Karim became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) at the age of nine in 2004. She represented Pakistan in international forums such as TechEd and Developers Conference along with other major events.

Its no secret that Pakistan has lagged behind the global players in the research and development sector. Pakistan was ranked 111th out of 144 countries in Global IT Forum 2014 by World Economic Forum. The government is hoping that the establishment of the IT City in Malir helps reverse this negative trend.

Initiation of Other Projects
Minister Sikandar Ali stated that the ministry is also focusing on widespread projects including e-governance with various departments of government; health, education, law enforcement agencies, police, judiciary, NADRA and district government.

Ministry is also working on Geographical Information System (GIS). The system will contain information from maps of the city to population density along with various indicators.

The minister also extended his hand of friendship to FPCCI to create data banks for improving IT services.

Arshad Farooq, FPCCI president, showed his gratitude to the minister. He also expressed his desire to create “paper less environment to develop strong linkages among the organizations for information sharing”.

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Pakistan’s First Digital Forensic Research Service Center Announced

During a seminar at a hotel, the Vice Chancellor of Lahore Garrison University, Obaid bin Zakria announced the initiative to establish Pakistan’s first Digital Forensics Research Service Center’s (DFRSC).

According to him, the importance of digital forensic methods and tools in solving crimes, especially after the passage of the Cyber Crime Bill in Pakistan is needed now more than ever.

Establishment of this Digital Forensic Research and Service Centre is one of the important milestone towards achieving this goal. – Obaid bin Zakria

Pakistan’s First Digital Forensic Research Service Center to Enforce Cyber Crime Laws
The Digital Forensics lab initiative comes soon after the approval of the Cyber Crime Bill from the National Assembly. Many of the cyber crimes listed in the bill needed modern forensic methods to be investigated properly and the lab can make sure that investigations are impartial and up to date.

The aim of the DFRSC will be to provide assistance in investigations for crimes involving the use of cellphones, internet and social media.

To spread awareness about fighting crime in this digital age, the DFRSC will conduct researches, trainings, certifications, surveys and degree programs. In addition to these, the center will also publish white papers relating to different forensics and cyber security fields.

The first director of the DFRSC, once its operational, is expected to be Mr. Kokab Jamal Zuberi, the founding chairman of International Association of Digital Forensic Experts.

The event attracted a lot of notable guests. Also in attendance during the seminar were former Governor Punjab Khalid Maqbool as the chief guest, with NAB Punjab’s Director General Burhan Ali, police teams from Islamabad and Lahore, FIA Director General Syed Tehsin Shah, Lahore High Court Bar Association President Rana Zia Abdul Rehman and National Cyber Security Task Force member Khwaja Muhammad Ali, among other notable persons.

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What Other Provinces Can Learn from Punjab

Technology play a great role in solving problem of modern age. The scope of the solution is unlimited but effort and vision is required. The Punjab Governed left no stoned unturned when it comes to facilitate public unlike other provinces.

 A lot of the credit to this change can be given to the Punjab Information and Technology Board (PITB), headed by the Chairman Dr Umar Saif since 2011. Saif - who received his PhD from Trinity College, Cambridge - also serves as the Vice Chancellor of the Information Technology University in Pakistan, after a four year stint teaching and working at MIT.

The Pakistani province of Punjab holds more than half of the country's population and in 2011 it was facing a dengue epidemic, with 21,000 cases and hundreds of fatalities. Part of the problem was the haphazard of digitisation of records, which made it hard to co-ordinate work across departments. The solution that the PITB came up with was to create a smartphone application that could be distributed to workers and officials in the various government departments engaged in tackling dengue. The app was used to track the work being done to fight the disease, and to also map the spread of dengue.

 Saif shares his insights into the challenges of bringing a technology solution to a government problem.

"Historically, IT departments around the world have stuck to using personal computers as the platform for their solutions," Saif explains, "and this has some fundamental flaws. Governments spend billions buying the hardware and software, but the uptake of technology is very low."

"The bureaucracy - particularly the lower tiers, are not computer savvy, and PCs have a lot of infrastructural needs," he adds. "And a senior bureaucrat will often not want to use the computer either, and just gives it to an assistant in a back room. That's the state of things in Pakistan, and I suspect, in countries like India too - such devices are used more as typewriters."

To work around these constraints, the PITB invested in Android smartphones - cheaper ones for the lower level staff, and high-end ones for the senior officials - and distributed these devices with a few work-related pre-installed apps along with some paid for talk time and messages.

In 2011, when Saif joined the PITB, smartphone penetration was growing fast, and the networks were growing as well. With their own batteries and wireless connections, phones solved one of the bigger problems that PCs faced. But more than that, Saif says that the phones also come with "social value."

"You can call friends and family, watch a film, or play games on the phone," says Saif. "They're intuitive, and everyone wants to use one, so they won't get handed off to an assistant. So with the hardware taken care of, we [the PITB] could focus our efforts on developing smartphone applications for automating government work."

The PITB team would go on to develop an automated platform with which they could crank out simple, template-based apps for government departments in minutes, based on the queries that each department needed to track, but the first stage - after convincing an extremely sceptical bureaucracy - was making the dengue tracking app.

 

The app needed to be able to track the location of each report, save pictures both before and after interventions to measure their effectiveness, and also share this information to a centralised database. This helped the team in locating the epicentre of the disease, and tracking the aedes larva. To do this, the PITB equipped the field workers to track the containment activities, so that all incidents, larvae, and control activities could be viewed on a map to track trends and developments.

"We bought 1,500 smartphones and giving them out to different government departments," says Saif. "So everything you [the workers] do, go to a house, or do some fog spray, or use the chemicals to kill the larva in a pond of water, or you clear a puddle of water, or shred some tyres, or you are putting some fish in a pond, which will eat the larva, any such activity; [the workers] take a before and after photo, which geotags the activity, and time stamps it. We have entomologists who go around looking for the larva, and they geotag their findings as well. We use this as a predictive tool to figure out where the patients will come from. We also geotag the houses of the confirmed patients; the system carries out statistical analysis, and raises alerts and highlights that on the map and automatically messages the district staff as well."

This also solved one of the big issues that had been facing the different departments - staff accountability. Since all the work is being geotagged and time stamped, if there is any lacuna, it is possible now to zero in on the exact area and time where photos needed to be checked. Accountability was in fact the biggest selling point to many of the heads of departments, to get better insights into the work their staffers were doing, according to Saif.

The project was a success - dengue is no longer at epidemic status in Punjab - and with World Bank funding, the core idea has been rolled out to multiple functions of the government. Agricultural expansion is now being tracked and verified, drug inspectors are uploading data on all the pharmacies they check, while the police in Lahore geotag all crime scenes to analyse patterns in crime.

"Often there are external factors which would affect the incidence of crime in an area," says Saif. "The map visualisation makes it possible to understand the problem and take preventative measures. For this reason, each station has two smartphones now."

If you think about it, that's not actually so different from most location-based social networks that exist right now, and once the PITB got the green light, it did not take them long to get prototypes running. Saif credits Burhan Rasool, a member of the PITB, with having done most of the actual coding required. Since then, Rasool has created several more applications for the PITB - 26 in total - which are being used in different spheres of the government.

Aside from smartphone applications, the PITB has also taken a page from the work being done in India, and is trying to move Punjab away from a stamp paper regime, by digitising land records. Along with this, the board is also rolling out educational campaigns on the phone, and SMS outreach programs, similar to the work being done in parts of India.

Three years ago though, all this was still pretty far off, and Saif had an uphill task of convincing people that the project would bring about the desired results.

"Convincing the district officers, then 17 government departments, was a challenge," says Saif. "Two and a half years down the line people have come to see the value and it has become easier, but it was definitely an uphill struggle at first. The Chief Minister's [Shahbaz Sharif] support was "We make the data public, that makes it harder to be inefficient, and will cut out commissions and bribes, and so there can emerge an adversarial relationship," says Saif.

Along the way, Saif has learned a useful lesson, which he believes is important for people here to know as well.

"When you talk to IT people," he says, "we often see the ideal solution. And the behaviour of people at the ground level does not always get factored into our thinking."

Instead, Saif believes, technology should be used as a measurement tool.

"Identifying the bottlenecks - are people doing their jobs properly - this is the real way in which to drive progress. Use technology to drive decisions, instead of replacing the existing processes."

 

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Mankind has moved into a new phase of its history

Mankind has moved into a new phase of its history. Death of distance has occurred and time zones have been conquered. Nation State is rapidly losing its legitimacy over absolute sovereignty along with loss of the total monopoly of power over the land it controls. Non state and non governmental organisations are on the rise to the extent that some of them are more powerful than any nation state or government. Microsoft and al Qaida are the two contradictory examples of such non state organisations who can play havoc with a nation state. World is slowly transforming into zones of stability (producing Microsoft) and zones of chaos (producing al Qaida). Due to the collapse of distance and time barriers stable zones cannot afford to have too many unstable zones in the world. So it becomes imperative to have a 'new world order' that can maintain rule of law and stability in the world which is getting smaller by the day. While all this is happening, the individual has completely lost his individuality and the ability to remain private and unique. This phase of uncertainty in my opinion is going to last at least for 25 years when things will start settling. In almost a quarter of a century new patterns will get established, new norms will come into being and a new way of global life will emerge. Humanity as a whole at the moment is going through birth pains of that new era. My gut feeling is that if understood properly and planned proactively this new era will bring unprecedented opportunities for the mankind. However, if we remain oblivious of the trends unleashed in the late 90s of the last century, we surely are then going to face some very unpleasant surprises.

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