Federal Minister for Planning, Development, and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal has told the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) and the Ministry of Information Technology to develop a dedicated dashboard in order to monitor the daily activities of the economy of the country. Ahsan Iqbal said; “The dashboard will also help promote innovative projects of national importance under the Innovation Support Fund (ISF), which will be launched soon.”
Dedicated Dashboard to Help Policymakers in Formulating the Policy
While chairing a meeting for the development of the National Integrated Dashboard, Ahsan Iqbal said that there is no proper integrated dashboard where economic management could be monitored by the key ministries particularly finance. He told the concerned ministries and PBS to develop a dashboard so that the economic situation could be monitored on a daily basis but it would also help the policymakers in formulating the policy. The minister mentioned that there should be a dashboard at two levels, one for top leadership and the second for the secretary’s level so every ministry could monitor the economic indicators.
While stressing for a system analyst to work on the dashboard, he said that there is a bulk of data hidden in government departments but we should have a system to utilize it. The minister also maintained that there should be a data policy as well to which the secretary of the IT ministry said that they are already working on the policy and it would take a few months to finalize it.
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Promotion of Innovative Projects
During the meeting, the minister directed the authorities to hold a round-table conference to promote innovative projects of national importance under the ISF project. He said; “We should recognize innovation as a tool to achieve maximum productivity and efficiency in agriculture, health, education, and other sectors.”
