Category: IT news

Web Desk – Pakistan plans to significantly increase the scale of its delegation to China’s hi-tech fair next year, as it tries to build more connections with China’s IT market.

The Pakistan Software Export Board, a government body focusing on promoting the country’s IT industry in local and overseas markets, plans to double its contingent at the next fair.

“CHTF is a very good platform, because all high-tech enterprises are here, not just those from Shenzhen, but from all parts of China,” international marketing manager Jahanzaib Shafi told China Daily in an exclusive interview at the last day of the China Hi-Tech Fair here on Monday.

“China is an important market for everyone, including us.” He said exhibitors from his country have gained a lot from participating in the event.

“At this year’s fair, one company from our delegation that specializes in creating virtual reality content, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a local hardware producer in Shenzhen,” he said.

“We plan to have a bigger presence next year, probably doubling the current scale.” Five enterprises and organizations from Pakistan took part in this year’s event.

CHTF, known as the country’s biggest and most influential technology show, is a platform for enterprises and organizations from all over the world to share and trade their latest technology and products.

This year’s fair, held in Shenzhen from November 16 to 21, has attracted more than 3,000 exhibitors from 37 countries and regions across the world.

WEB DESK – While Intel unveiled its first commercially available drone this week with the Falcon 8+ drone, it made even bigger news when it broke its record for a simultaneous launched drone flight that featured 500 of its Shooting Star drones controlled by a single operator. While the Falcon is Intel’s wanting into the growing drone space, the Shooting Star drones and recently granted permission from the FAA are designed to be flown for amusement parks, companies, sports teams and cities for celebrations and special events.

“These drones are able to fly as a fleet, this is the first time ever we can show it works so well with so many drones!” said Daniel Gurdan, Intel Engineering Lead.

Intel is hoping to reproduce a little of that magic with its Shooting Star drones.

“We’ve really thought about what are some of the issues commercial customers face today and when they want to get that crisp, hi-res image, you don’t want any of the rotors in the image”, she said. “What I mean by that is, with the 8 rotors, you can have up to 2 rotors on each side stop and still fly the drone safely home”. It also take two batteries and will seamlessly switch power sources when one is exhausted.

Natalie Cheung, Intel Light Show Business Lead told Guinness, “We’re showing regulators around the world that UAV technologies used the right ways can help shape new rules for manned and unmanned aerial vehicles”.

Called the Intel Cockpit, it’s a completely new design that replaces a previous one that was based on a model airplane controller.

“We believe drones are an important computing platform for the future and we are continuing to invest in technologies and companies that will enable us to provide the best compute, sensor, communications and software integration for the growing drone ecosystem”, said Anil Nanduri, VP of Intel’s New Technology group, in a blog post, “These announcements represent a string of progress we’ve made in the drone space”.

All of the 500 drones moved as a single fleet, operated by one pilot with a laptop. At this year’s CES, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich shared his vision for this, claiming drones are safer and easier to control than fireworks.

LAHORE – The Punjab government will impart free IT training to tens of thousands male and female youth of the province under its e-Rozgar Programme. As many as ten thousand youth will be trained up to June next year in first phase.

It was stated by the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) Chairman Dr Saif while addressing the launch ceremony of ‘Herself’s partnership with Facebook’s “She Means Business” held at Arfa Software Technology Park on Wednesday. Senior representatives from Facebook’s headquarters in USA and dignitaries from the tech community of Pakistan were also present at the event.

Dr Saif said: “The state of the art computer labs equipped with the latest technology was being established at all 36 districts of the province for which all funding would be made by the Punjab government”. He said: “We are thankful to the Facebook administration that has selected us for such a useful tech programme to empower women economically in Pakistan. The PITB’s initiative, Herself, had become the first project in Pakistan to collaborate with Facebook’s economic empowerment initiatives for women. The basic motive of this project is to enable women to do more than what they think they’re capable of doing, therefore, giving them the lead. Herself is a platform for exposing women to a set of trainings that would, in return, help them to monetize their skills. By collaborating with Facebook’s SheMeansBusiness, I can foresee an increase of women participation in workforce and leadership. With the right aspiration and motivation, the female community can go above and beyond their male counterparts.” The delegation consisted of globally recognised names like Ms Jennifer Fong, Head of Strategic Product Partnerships at Facebook, and Ms Claire Deevy, who is the Head of Economic Growth Initiatives APAC at Facebook. Moreover, Ms Aurélie Salvaire, head of TEDx Barcelona, the Coaching Fellowship & Impact HUB Barcelona also contributed to the event by conducting a networking activity.

PEF: The Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) has decided to hold third party validation of phase one of Public School Support Programme (PSSP). The purpose of this initiative is to examine the performance and overall institutional transparency.

PEF Managing Director Tariq Mahmood said this while presiding over a weekly coordination meeting at his office on Wednesday, according to a handout issued here.

The meeting reviewed the organisational performance. It was observed that PEF had been very successful in reaching out to the low-income segments in different districts. It was quite difficult for the impecunious strata to arrange free quality education for their children because of lack of resources. But the foundation has designed and launched different public private partnership based educational programmes so that the needy students could continue their education without any difficulty. This is a great achievement against illiteracy and it is commendable that the girls have been equal beneficiary of PEF-sponsored interventions, the handout said.

At the meeting, it was recommended that besides acquiring building fitness certificates from the partner schools, standard of different educational facilities should also be examined so that the teachers and students could enjoy safe and secure atmosphere for education.

ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Information, Technology and Telecommunication has finalised a draft IT policy, which envisages software and telecom services exports at $6 billion by 2020.

Some of the key features of the draft National IT policy are data analytics, entrepreneurship, Internet of Things (IoT), e-commerce, e-agriculture and software export. It is expected that the draft policy would be submitted to the Economic Coordination Committee for its approval soon.

According to the draft policy, there has been better growth in recent years of overall information technology industry in the country with IT firms earning nearly $560 million, mainly in software development and service outsourcing. However, it has been estimated that around 75 percent of earnings are held overseas to finance cost of foreign offices and international marketing making real figure in excess of $2.2 billion. IT exports have witnessed 41 percent increase during last one year.

According to statistics, Pakistan has more than 2,000 IT companies and calls centres and the number is growing every year. Pakistan has more than 300,000 English-speaking IT professionals with expertise in latest IT products and technologies.

More than 20,000 IT graduates and engineers are being produced every year. Pakistan has 14 Software Technology Parks at present with an area of one million square feet with more being planned for future.

Free-lancing revenue is around $90-100 million per year; domestic revenue stands at Rs 30 billion or $300 million. The policy is targeting to enhance exports of software and IT enabled services to create jobs and contribute towards government’s efforts to increase overall exports and IT remittances.

The policy mainly concentrates on emerging areas of mobile applications, responsive web applications and animation. It also envisages attracting multinational global companies to utilise Pakistani manpower for back-end services by providing appropriate incentives in a transparent manner, utilise the Pakistani Diaspora in the US and European markets to plug young entrepreneurs into the global IT value chain.

The policy is also aimed at providing enabling environment for companies to set up venture capital and other financing mechanisms to start-up companies. Work with relevant stakeholders on continual basis like the Federal Board of Revenue, Finance Division and provincial revenue authorities for better tax treatment of IT industry. When contacted, official sources Tuesday said that given the growing trends of IT, it has become imperative to reformulate the National IT policy to take into account the fundamentals of technology and its eco-system centred on digitisation.

Last year, the ministry successfully conducted a final “Stakeholders Consultation” to review the draft national IT policy. The initial draft was prepared with the support and coordination of IT Industry, PASHA, Academia, civil society and government departments concerned. The draft document was further deliberated in multiple focused group sessions with researchers from prime academic institutions, high ranking IT experts, civil society, experienced government decision makers, digital and Internet service providers as well as other associated stakeholders.

ISLAMABAD –  In order to review the draft of National IT Policy, Ministry of Information Technology (IT) on Thursday held final consultation with stakeholders.While chairing the event, Minister of State for IT and Telecom Anusha Rehman stated that this policy document won’t deliver desired results until and unless it is not endorsed by the industry and other stakeholders.She said, “In last few years, the world has witnessed a phenomenal growth in our IT sector due to our appropriate policy measures and strenuous efforts.
Therefore, we earned four international recognitions which speak volume of our inclination and determination to bring an IT revolution in the country.The minister said that the government gives highest priority to the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector, particularly IT exports, e-Governance entrepreneurship and innovation, in order to create an accelerated digitisation ecosystem to expand knowledge based economy.“Therefore, we want to bring a comprehensive new IT policy which could ensure creation of a holistic digital ecosystem with other wide-ranging objectives like promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, infrastructure development, increase in IT exports, legislative measures to safeguard software industry, enabling e-Commerce environment, and Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) for IT accessibility,” she added.
The key features of the new National IT Policy document are sectorial digitisation, big data, data analytics, entrepreneurship, Internet of Things (IoT), e-commerce, e-agriculture, software export.It is expected that the National IT Policy 2016 will be submitted to ECC within the next six weeks for its approval.IT Industry representatives, government officials and other dignitaries were also present on the occasion.

ISLAMABAD –  Ministry of IT Tuesday announced that the final stakeholders’ consultation on the national IT policy will be held on Thursday (tomorrow).

Ministry formulated multi-stakeholder based working groups in August, 2016 and the draft policy was shared with the nominated members of the working groups for their feedback at that time.

The objective of the event is to finalise the national IT policy to create a holistic digital ecosystem.
The working groups will focus on key topics such as promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, infrastructure development, increase in IT exports, legislative measures to safeguard software industry, enabling e-commerce environment, gender empowerment & of Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) for IT accessibility.

On the other hand, Minister for IT and Telecom Anusha Rehman said that the liberal and investment-friendly policies and economic reforms introduced by the present government are phenomenal and nothing less than a telecom revolution in IT & telecom sector.

The minister expressed these views during her meeting with Jon Eddy, Head of Emerging Markets Vimpelcom Limited, a global provider of telecommunication services at her office.

The minister said that Pakistan offers ample opportunities for investment in the telecom sector and the government accords highest priority to the development of IT & telecom sector.

Young Scientists compete for opportunity to represent Pakistan at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2017 to be held in Los Angeles, California from May 14-19, 2017

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

• 520 young scientists from across Sindh submitted 280 research-based projects.
• Winners of the Sindh Provincial Science Fair are eligible to compete at the National Science Fair.
• A total of 230 students will be displaying 80 projects at the fair

PAKISTAN, Karachi, 20 October 2016 – Intel Pakistan today concluded the Sindh Science Fair in the run-up to the Intel® International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel® ISEF). Intel® ISEF, one of the world’s largest pre-college science competitions, will be held in Los Angeles, California from May 14- May19, 2017.

During the Sindh Provincial Science Fair, students from across the province presented research-based projects in the categories of biology, chemistry, computer sciences, mathematics and physics. More than 520 students and 91 teachers from all over Sindh participated in the fair, covering 280 projects.

Winners of the Sindh Provincial Science Fair, which is one of 4 provincial fairs across Pakistan, will be eligible to compete at the National Science where projects from all four provinces will be assessed by a panel of renowned judges, with winners eligible to compete at the 2017 Intel® ISEF

Intel has sponsored the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) for almost 2 decades now. Each year the fairs witness tremendous talent flowing from all over the world. ISEF is an international platform for youth both academically and socially, as they interact with each other during mixers and ceremonies which helps them gain confidence and valuable experience.