DIGITALIZATION IN PAKISTAN

• Pakistan was ranked at number four for freelance development in the world and IT exports have
increased 70% during the last three years.
• Pakistan, which has about 60% of its 200 million population in the 15 to 29 age group, represents
an enormous human and knowledge capital. Pakistan has more than 2000 IT companies & call
centers and the number is growing every year. Pakistan has more than 300,000 English-speaking
IT professionals with expertise in current and emerging IT products and technologies. More than
20,000 IT graduates and engineers are being produced each year.
• The GOP has a holistic strategy for positioning Pakistan on the global outsourcing map,
participation in international forums, organizing domestic conferences, scaling software
technology parks and facilitating certification (ISO 27001 and CMMI) programs

The vision with regards to Digital Pakistan Policy is:

“To become a strategic enabler for an accelerated digitization eco system to expand the
knowledge based economy and spur socio economic growth”

OBJECTIVES:
• This policy represents a shift away from a piece-meal approach to a holistic technology strategy
clearly focused on ICT as a broad enabler of every sector of socioeconomic development.
• Sectorial Digitalization Promote the use of technology in education, health, agriculture and
other key socio economic sectors. Encourage the use of ICT in public schools and ensure they are
online and have a meaningful impact on the current education eco-system in a phased manner.
• . According to some estimates, the market carries an enormous growth potential due to
exponential growth in broadband subscribers from 3.7 million in 2013 to over 44.3 million in
2017 and increasing. With these growth trends projected to persist in the future, overseas
investments will continue to grow in e-commerce.
• Ensuring women and girls have equal access to ICTs will help reduce inequalities and support
gender equality.
• . Promote and encourage entrepreneurship by providing incentives to IT sector and training for
young professionals to become freelancers.
• Increase software exports, IT remittances & Domestic Market
• ICT Ranking of Pakistan Improve Pakistan’s ICT ranking based on international indices and
benchmarks measuring the business & innovation environment, infrastructure, affordability,
skills readiness, and socioeconomic impact. Improve the provision of data to the international
rating agencies.
• 200 million twitter user' email addresses leaked: researchers says
(published in dawn 6 january 2023)
https://www.trtworld.com/americas/us-launches-online-application-system-for-mexican-border-
asylum-seekers-64453 (13 JAN 2023)
a technique called steganography, a means of hiding a data file within the code of another data file.
Mr Zheng utilised it on multiple occasions to take sensitive files from GE.
It is part of a broader struggle as China strives to gain technological knowhow to power its economy
and its challenge to the geopolitical order, while the US does its best to prevent a serious competitor
to American power from emergingIn the DOJ statement on Zheng, the FBI's Alan Kohler Jr said China
was targeting "American ingenuity" and seeking to "topple our status" as global leade(bbc news17 jan
2023)
Advances in communication technology
1455 Gutenberg Bible is published, initiating the printing revolution through the first use of
removable and reusable type.
1837 The telegraph is invented, providing the first means of substantially superterritorial
communication.
1876 The telephone is invented by Alexander Graham Bell, although the first telephone device
was built in 1861 by the German scientist Johann Philip Reis.
1894 The radio is invented by Guglielmo Marconi, with a transatlantic radio signal being received
for the first time in 1901.
1928 Television is invented by John Logie Baird, becoming commercially available in the late
1930s and reaching a mass audience in the 1950s and 1960s.
1936 First freely programmable computer is invented by Konrad Zuse.
1957 The Soviet Sputnik 1 is launched, initiating the era of communications satellites (sometimes
called SATCOM).
1962 ‘Third generation’ computers, using integrated circuits (or microchips), started to appear
(notably NASA’s Apollo Guidance Computer).
1969 Earliest version of the Internet developed, in the form of the ARPANET link between the
University of California and the Stanford Research Institute, with electronic mail, or email,
being developed three years later.
1991 Earliest version of the World Wide Web became publicly available as a global information
medium through which users can read and write via computers connected to the Internet.
1995 Digitalization is introduced by Netscape and the Web, substantially broadening access to
the Internet and the scope of other technologies (BOOK- GLOBAL POLITICS)