‘Governments be enabled to adoptdigitalization for effective governance’

F.P. Report

Islamabad: Executive Director COMSATS, Ambassador Dr. Nafees Zakaria urged that governments should adopt digitalization as citizen centric national policy for efficient and effective governance.

He was addressing the 22nd Session of the Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA), which is a technical advisory body of the UN responsible for supporting the work of its Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) concerning the promotion and development of public administration and governance among Member States particularly in relation to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and in support of the implementation and review progress of SDGs.

The Executive Director COMSATS was invited to share expert views on ‘Stimulating public sector innovation through digital technology and measuring the impact of digital government. The thematic session, ‘Urgently transforming institutions for a greener, more inclusive and more resilient world at a time of multiple crises, was held yesterday at UN Headquarters, New York. Referring to the imminent economic crisis, Ambassador Zakaria said that the real challenge would be how we use technology to lessen its impact. He suggested that digitalization should be pursued by the governments as a national policy initiative. He noted that digitalization helped a great deal during the Pandemic COVID19, and that it bridged the work gap created by mandatory social distancing and isolation by transforming remote working to put the global economy back on track to a great extent.

Noting the widening technological gap and the capacity between the developed and developing countries, he suggested joint efforts to bridge knowledge, technology and resource gap. He remarked that COMSATS is pursuing the objective of self-reliance by way of exploiting the knowledge and scientific strengths of the COMSATS member states. He also informed the gathering that COMSATS has launched and executed successful transformation citizen-centric programs that enable and improve collaboration between citizens, government entities, and relevant private sector industry participants, and that COMSATS is open to partnership.