Fearing data leak, PTI mulls social media ban in govt offices

NA panel on IT told govt officials will be barred from bringing storage devices like USBs

ISLAMABAD: The government is studying a proposal to impose ban on social media sites and communication networks like Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube in the government offices fearing a risk of leakage of important data.

Under a proposed plan, the government officials would also be banned from bringing storage devices like –USBs - to the offices.

The National Information Technology Board (NITB) has recommended the government to impose ban on social networking tools in the government offices. A new communication system ‘Govt-App’ on pattern of WhatsApp would be introduced for the federal government employees to store data in Pakistan to reduce risks of data leakages. The implementation of this framework is likely to impose a complete ban on the use of social media by the government servants during working hours.

The National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication was informed on Wednesday which met here with Ali Khan Jadoon in the chair.

In order to stop fake news on social media, the government had approached Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to develop standard operating procedures (SoPs) and different official meetings were conducted with the representative of social media sites. It was also informed that government was also working on a framework to issue authentic government news on social media.

It was also informed that work on SoPs for anti-money laundering as well for developing framework for online payment gateway was also underway. The government also plans to convert into e-offices by June 2020.

MoITT joint secretary informed the panel that the federal cabinet had approved to convert all the federal ministries and departments by June 2020 with centralised procurement at cost of Rs1.4 billion.

However, the cost would go up after the rupee depreciation. As many as 29 ministries have been upgraded to different levels of e-offices while 13 are still at zero level.

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa IT Board official said that they are facing difficulties in e-office implementation as the government officials are reluctant to adopt it. He further said that there is no legal cover for data safety and needs legislation before implementing e-office.  He further raised questions on KP e-bidding while saying that currently the contractors only apply online but the tenders are being opened on the conventional way. He said that e-bidding was not totally digitized.

The NITB also informed the meeting about another program named ‘BootCamp’ under which the officials from international giant IT hub Silicon Valley will be invited to train the federal employees with respect to different operations under Ministry of IT and Telecommunications.

PPP MNA Naz Baloch suggested that this training should not be restricted only for the federal employees but provincial employees of different government organizations should also be given the opportunity to get the training from IT experts of Silicon Valley.

NITB officials apprised the House that one million online applications have been received under ‘Kamyab Jawan Programme’. In case of denying of application the bank is responsible to give explanation to the applicant, they added. They said that PM youth loan has received 7,000 applications over the last five years and their data has also been included in current programme data.

The meeting was attended by MNAs Mazia Hameed, Ali Gohar Kahn, Kanwal Kanwal Shauzab, Makhdoom Zia Hussain Qureshi and officials from Ministry for Information Technology and Telecommunication.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 21^st, 2019.