The E-Crime Bill has been enacted

We hear that this Bill has been passed as an Ordinance by the President but no signs of the new draft appears to be available on any of the government websites. A number of us have tried to get hold of it through sources in the Ministry of IT & Telecom as well as the PSEB but to no avail. However, the author of the Bill has appeared on some television channels to laud its passing as an Ordinance.

I really cannot comment on it until I get my hands on the current document. In the form that we saw it last, it was definitely not a piece of legislation that should have been passed without a complete review.

These are presentations made by Barrister Zahid Jamil at a Civil Society meeting at T2F to give business people and other professionals, students and journalists an idea of why the Bill should not be enacted in its present form.

Zahid Jamil’s Presentation:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

One-to-One Q/A with Civil Society

Recommended Reading:

Cyber Crime FAQ | Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act | Letter to Cabinet

Good news for the Pakistan tech sector

Gartner, which never really had Pakistan on its radar, has in a recent report put Pakistan amongst First Category countries for outsourced services. Apparently cost arbitrage and competitive telecom costs as well improved infrastructure have been cited as the reasons for this.

The upcoming P@SHA study will however provide subsantial reasons and statistics relating to growth, professionalism, maturity, employment. The study, which has been conducted by Athar Osama, a PhD from the Rand Policy Institute, is a 5-6 month effort to start an annual initiative to document the Pakistan IT and ITES industry. It widely documents through a rigorous process of online surveys, phone surveys as well one-to-one conversations, where the Pakistan industry is at, how it has grown in the past 3 years as well as projections for the future. We will finally have hard facts to deal with instead of gut feel and vague optimistic forecasts. Watch out for it!