K-P IT Board launches Civic Hackathon Fellowship for Peshawar students

Minister for Information Technology says 12 students were selected for fellowship who will work with the STD.

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Paktunkhwa Information Technology Board launched Civic Hackathon Fellowship for Peshawar students on Tuesday.

The announcement was made by Minister for Information Technology (IT) Shahram Khan Tarakai who appreciated the efforts of the solution software applications which formed by the IT students for which the ceremony was organised.

He said the basic aim of the fellowship is to promote the IT sector and the aim of the event was to identify citizen problems and develop its prototype based technology solution.

Managing Director (MD) IT Board Engineer Sadiqullah Khan told The Express Tribune that Software Technology Department (STD) in collaboration with University of Engineer and Technology (UET) had also organised IT competition at UET Peshawar in February 2014.

He said that a total of 75 students participated in the Hackathon and presented different kinds of web and mobile applications that were citizen-facing solutions to government information and services.

Khan said that 12 students were selected for fellowship who will work with the STD.

The beneficiary of the fellowship who is a student of the UET Peshawar Muhammad Ahmad Ibrahim told The Express Tribune he will have solutions through developing specific software for energy and power department with the help of GPRS for overcoming power theft.

Meanwhile the provincial government in partnership with the World Bank and Code for Pakistan, a software organisation, has arranged a three days event “Peshawar Civic Hackathon” in which the 75 participants participated out of which 12 were given fellowships for their best solution applications.

In the event, all civic minded designers, web developers, hackers, and data analyst from across the province were invited to participate for giving solution to civic problems, learning new tools and meeting intelligent people.

The 12 fellows will work on projects including Rehnuma for IT Directorate, Messiah for PDMA, FDMA and Home departments, Sadda Doctor for the Health department and No Kunda for Energy & Power department.