Session 1: Business Technology Challenges
The first session, about Business Technology Challenges, had Parvez Iftikhar give his opening remarks about what the Universal Service Fund was all about and the role it played in the enablement of business in the underserved areas of Pakistan. The USF is essentially a fund for providing the expansion of telecom infrastructure to areas where it may not make commercial sense for one operator to establish their footprint on their own. Hence, every telecom company makes a mandatory contribution to the fund, so the USF can auction out areas of country to strengthen the infrastructure. One of the reasons why the USF had been invited to participate at the CIO YearAhead conference was to demonstrate a live example of a model that is already in effect as far as the Telco sector is concerned.

Ashar Zaidi, the Country Manager of Intel Pakistan took the audience through numbers and size of the hardware sector in Pakistan and some of the challenges that are faced by one of the components which can trigger the rate of growth of everything from internet usage to business. Ashar was also bombarded with a number of questions about how stopping the growth of refurbished systems will reduce the adaptation rate for the large population of Pakistan. By engaging in the debate, Ashar was able to at least explain to the audience what Intel’s policy and vision was for the local hardware brands.

Next Asim Hussain from SAP Pakistan took the audience through how SAP could help companies and industries to gain in efficiency, which ultimately helps to reduce costs. He also talked about how SAP’s presence in Pakistan was facilitating companies to have support.

Kamran Meer, the Chief Information Security Officer, made an impromptu presentation about how vendors approached customers with the ‘biggest, the best and the fastest” products. “Not everything which is the best, is essentially good for the organization,” he said, which got him a great round of applause. It is important to get their perspective of the client to see whether the solutions that they are being sold, are even in alignment with what is actually needed. Kamran also responded to a number of questions who wanted him to comment on the readiness of the vendor market to see whether they were even prepared to adequately service the size of the financial market, by saying that it was no longer the size or age of the company that matters. “There are a lot of smaller companies and startups that have come up who are just as able to provide the service the companies need.”

Arif Hussain, the Chief Operating Officer of Multinet, joined the session to talk about the internet space, which is usually least focused on at conferences. He stressed on the need to never compromise on quality or let people blame it on senseless excuses since companies in Pakistan deserve the best service level quality there is to offer. Arif, having recently returned to Pakistan after having lived in the US for almost all his life, commented that the infrastructure and level of quality as far as technology infrastructure is concerned, is comparable to any country in the West.

The first session ended with a firing round of questions coming in over SMS, addressed to each panelist. It is, however, evident that unless these business challenges are not addressed, the issues will remain on a long term basis and the industry outside the technology sector will not be able to increase its adoption of IT.

Session 2: HR Roadmap
After highlighting some of the business technology challenges, the second session focused on the HR Roadmap. The industry and the academia has had some serious alignment issues. The HR that the academia is producing seems to be what the industry isn’t looking for – by the same token, the academia says that there isn’t enough attention or input given by the industry to help reduce the gap. However CIO Pakistan managed to somehow get a distinguished panel of 4 PhDs on stage.

To lay out the stage, we had Professor Dr. Atta Ur Rahman, the former Chairman of the Higher Education Commission (HEC), speak about how much work has already been done vis a vis skills uplifting and job creation. Because Dr. Atta was the Minister of Science and Technology back at the time when the original IT Policy was made, he was able to draw out a comparison between the projects initiated in the early part of 2000 and how they were tracked and measured until the time he was the Chairman of the HEC. Some astounding work had been done, including strengthening the technology infrastructure quality of the universities themselves.

Dr. Aamir Matin, Country Manager of Cisco Systems, began by presenting a statement which not many people reacted well to. According to Dr. Matin’s findings, he feels that it is critical for the progress of IT and Business in Pakistan, for us to take a step back and do a needs and gap analysis of where what we have and where we need to go. “The understanding seems to be that if there are x number of IT graduates coming into the market today, there are hardly enough jobs to absorb them. Therefore, there are enough graduates to meet the job demand right now.” The reality of the situation, he continued, is the fact that if you put out an ad in the paper today, you will get hundreds of applicants, usually a fraction of who actually fit the profile. The focus needs to be on updating the academia, and conducting extensive surveys that will enable us to see what numbers we need to go where we need to go.

Dr. Qasim Sheikh, CEO of the National ICT RnD Fund, gave an interesting presentation about what the state of entrepreneurship is in Pakistan as well as the number of projects that have been facilitated by the fund. A recurring suggestion that was continually sent via the SMS QnA was the fact that the National ICT RnD Fund should seriously consider initiating or funding an HR needs survey to help ascertain exactly where the industry is headed, what our specific needs are as well as what areas need more critical investment of resources.

Dr. Irfan Hyder, Dean and Vice President of PAF-KIET, someone who had been the driving force behind the eCommerce initiatives in the IT Policy back in 2001, stood and insisted that we go back to the basics. Without a firm investment in the moral fiber of our graduates, no matter what they learn, they will not be able to have a contribution to the future of Pakistan or any other country. “This is what is lacking!” he repeated.

At the end of the second session, the areas identified by the expert panel of PhDs made it evident that any plan to further invest in HR would only be short lived if some effort was not made to conduct surveys to better understand the circumstance and align it with the needs and gaps in the market.

Session 3: IT Policy
Rishi Jaitly, Senior Policy Analyst at Google Inc, joined us via video conference to talk about the difference between Internet and IT Policy and things a committee needed to keep in mind in order to have a policy which would enable growth and help to effectively facilitate the needs of the industry. Shahzad Ahmad from BytesForAll.net spoke about the rights and the voice of the individual, who is never represented or heard by the policy makers. He addressed issues of privacy and advocacy and the fact that if stakeholders are made part of the process of the formulation of policy, then they will be able to voice the concerns that the individuals have.

Saleem Ghauri, Chairman of the National ICT Task Force and President and CEO of NetSol Technologies, talked about his vision and his interest in creating a set of recommendations which can be presented to the Planning Commission, so they can better understand how to allocate resources to the specific “pain” areas. He spoke about the IT challenges that the local industry was facing along with the reasons why IT initiatives were not implemented. “My intent is not to overtake a policy formulation, but to help the government better understand what all of us need.”

Salman Ansari, CEO of SATC and one of the key architects of the original IT Policy, expressed a great deal of faith in the youth population of Pakistan and expressed disappointment at why we were unable to think outside the box. “10 minutes is too much to talk about why the IT Policy needs to be revised, and much too less to talk about what I really have to say,” he started off.

Shahida Saleem, Chairperson for the Standing Committee of IT at the FPCCI shared a critical approach to the way policies were formulated. “A change in the mindset is what is so desperately needed,” she outlined. Elements such as inclusion and collaboration must be enforced into the process for a piece of paper or legislation or policy to really mean anything.

Jehan Ara expressed P@SHA’s interest in supporting the growth of the IT sector and spreading the awareness of technology, efficiency and optimization to people and companies everywhere. “We must take ownership of what we want and where we need to go.” Jehan Ara then moderated the QnA session, where by wrapping up the CIO YearAhead’09.

What Next?
That is what’s on everyone’s minds. Will we have yet another event, followed by more discussion? Ideally speaking, since CIO Pakistan is a trade media platform for the sector, we will be putting all the recommendations accumulated during the event, forward to the stakeholders. The stakeholders must pinpoint the direction they wish to travel in, at which point the media can assist them.

A more comprehensive report will be published in the May 2009 issue of CIO Pakistan along with the YearAhead Review. Discussion forums which are already in place, will continue to be supported. The plan of action will, however, continue to be driven by the stakeholders – all of them.

We will be publishing the thread of these questions and answers, once the panelists respond to them, along with the rest of the coverage about the event in the next issue of CIO.

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