Pakistan is introducing an array of information technology (IT) initiatives to bridge the gap between communities to facilitate easy access to information. The initiative provides opportunities to foster business activities and deliver easy access to education and health services. In this regard, the incumbent government has launched” Smart Village”, an initiative influenced by the Ministry of Information Technology and telecommunications (MOIT&T) through the Universal Service Fund. Let’s dive deep into Pakistan’s Smart Village Project Initiatives.
What Is Pakistan’s Smart Village Initiative
What is a smart village project?
The MOIT&T has launched the Smart Village project, which will be introduced across four provinces of Pakistan, Islamabad Capital Territory and Gilgit Baltistan. The project mainly strives to enhance access of Pakistan’s most distant areas to modern facilities and train them to access these technologies readily.
How does it work?
The mechanism of smart villages is straightforward. The project will particularly have training centres in provinces and territories in the remotest areas to provide free-of-cost training to the youth. These training will cover domains of health, education, and commerce. These aspects further create opportunities for the people to improve their livelihoods.
What Will Be the Outcomes of the Project?
Smart Village is the recent initiative of the government’s digital Pakistan vision that will enhance collaboration between various sectors, stakeholders, and state departments with the citizens of multiple areas. The principal aim of the project is to introduce citizens’ access to these digital resources in the digital realm to improve cost-effectiveness and efficient use of resources. In addition, the government’s Digital Pakistan Vision will enable citizens to access other mobile applications and services introduced under this initiative.
The government of Pakistan will launch this project under the MOIT&T in collaboration with the Universal Service Fund (USF), which has a partnership with the Southeast Asia International Telecommunication Union ‘(ITU) and Huawei. It is one of the 30 mobile applications, government web portals, and website projects related to public service that has been launched so far.
Role of Pakistan Government in Smart Village initiatives
As Pakistan makes steady progress toward utilising opportunities in the digital world, its Smart Village Initiative is the latest addition to the numerous ground-breaking initiatives introduced by the incumbent government.
Role of State Bank of Pakistan (SBP)
The State Bank of Pakistan has shown a key interest in improving Pakistan’s Digital economy. Numerous fintech institutions have been registered recently to allow for greater inclusion of all population demographics in the country’s formal economy. The SBP is actively working to ensure licenses are given to private mobile application designers to facilitate easier money transfers. Due to these measures, exports remittances from IT and IT-enabled Services (ITeS) grew by 46% to reach USD 1.7 billion during the fiscal year 2020-2021. Digital Pakistan also introduces Raast, the country’s first digital payment system, to make payments easier by linking bank accounts with mobile numbers. Instead of memorising and storing lengthy bank details, individuals can now send payments in a faster more efficient way.
Government Smart Initiatives
Overseas Pakistanis are the backbone of Pakistan’s economy. For this reason, Roshan Digital Accounts were introduced to pave the way for increased investments and remittances from overseas Pakistanis. Moreover, Roshan Apni Car and Roshan Samaaji Khidmat have also been launched to allow immigrants to make direct investments.
Currently, the most inclusive digital program initiated by the government is Ehsaas Savings Wallet, which aims to promote the financial inclusion of financially-isolated classes in Pakistan. This digital program is designed for the lower-class citizens of the country to have a bank account under the government-initiated schemes and be able to timely cash any opportunity on investment of their funds.
There are many digital programs similar to Smart Village; the provincial governments of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab have also introduced the Digital KP 2020 Policy and Khidmat Aapke Dhleez Per, respectively. While the foremost is related to improving digital governance, the latter will improve districts’ municipal services in favour of the citizens.
Pakistan’s government has also taken initiatives in education, like the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) has introduced HEC e-library services. By far, this is a revolutionary initiative for providing e-educational services to the people of Pakistan. This digital program has been a welcome move in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conclusion
This blog is all about the smart initiatives introduced by the incumbent government to improve access to information across the remotest areas of Pakistan. On this matter, the smart village initiative is one of the digital programs covering health, education and commerce domains. There are so many programs stated above initiated under the government’s digital vision to train and improve the living standard of citizens. Nevertheless, the biggest challenge to meet remains for the real estate sector. However, an online registration system for tenants has been introduced in Islamabad. If you want to check for ownership of properties in any province, you can also contain data online.
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