PAKISTAN'S DIGITAL RIPENING

TECHNOLOGY has reduced distances and connected people across continents, turning the world into a true global village.

In today's world, nearly all of us wake up and instinctively reach out for our smartphones to check our email and social media updates, grab news bites, and engage in conversations.

Many of us call the cab to work, get the previous day's closing numbers, look for updates from our favorite brands, send or receive money, read a page or two from our favorite book, and a lot more all through our cell phones.

The tech marvels we could not imagine ever coming out of the science fiction and into the real world are more than commonplace today.

Technology, however, is not only connecting and facilitating us, it has become the cornerstone of social empowerment on a global scale and is delivering amazing solutions to longstanding social challenges.

While daily life has become faster and more informed thanks to to technology, governments too are becoming agile and more efficient.

Digital transformation is playing a major impact on smart and efficient governance and by embracing digital technologies such as Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence [AI], and Blockchain, governments are changing the way they do things and are making life easier and happier for their citizens.

Pakistan is considered amongst one of the major emerging global economies and as we aim for the knowledge economy, it's only through digitalisation on the government and people levels that we can pave the way for it.

Despite faring low on digital participation metrics, Pakistan has made great progress on achieving social equality and transforming underperforming industries.

The ICT sector of Pakistan, especially, has been the one actively supporting the country in its pursuit of digitalisation with a plethora of innovative initiatives to empower citizens and industries.

But, our governance still has a lot of room for improvement as we continue to face longstanding social and economic challenges.

Transformation of public services through e-government is a proven way of improving public service delivery with increasing transparency of the government.

The honor and serving of the latest operational research on Pakistan and Digital transformation, continues to Part 2..

The World Students Society thanks author, Irfan Wahab Khan, the CEO of Telenor Pakistan and EVP Head of Emerging-Asia cluster, Telenor Group