ISLAMABAD: After spending Rs310.8m ($2.96m), the federal government of Pakistan has decided to scrap a strategically important project to interconnect 57 federal ministries and divisions.
The project was aimed at providing basic IT infrastructure to all the federal divisions, ministries, and inter-connecting them through a secure data centre. The Executive Committee of National Economic Council in July 2004 approved the ‘Federal Government Data Centre (FGDC) and Intranet’ project. And by March 2013, the government had spent Rs310.88m out of the Rs450.9m earmarked for the project.
In September 2007, the project cost was revised upward to Rs493m and according to minutes of July 2 meeting of Central Development Working Party, an official forum for the approval of development projects, the World Bank was ready to provide soft loan for the project.
The basic purpose of FGDC was to improve the speed of communications within the government besides increasing the productivity of government functionaries and enabling them to efficiently provide services to citizens.
The project also included installation of Local Area Network with the provision of basic infrastructure to 22 divisions of the federal government and setting up of a federal government Intranet for providing inter-connectivity between the 35 federal government divisions through a high speed metropolitan area network The Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication on November 20, 2013 decided to wind up the project. INTERNEWS
