Senior Google executive to lead Pakistan’s digitisation initiative

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has gotten on board a senior executive of Google to lead the digitisation initiative from the Prime Minister’s Office that would also fix the digital payment system in the country.

Senior PTI leader, Jahangir Tareen during an interview announced that after ample efforts, the government has successfully persuaded a Pakistani woman, who was working for the tech giant in Singapore, to lead the initiative of digitisation of economy and federal institutions.

“Saying we want to digitise the economy is one thing and knowing what it means is another thing,” said Tareen during an interview with Pakistani digital influencer Muzamil Hasan.

“We are very lucky that after lots of effort and headhunting, we have had somebody, a young Pakistani lady, who was a senior executive in Google,” he said adding that, “She is going to come to Pakistan and she is going to lead the digitisation initiative from the Prime Minister’s Office.”

He went on to elaborate on the Strategic Reform and Implementation Unit (SRIU) that was created at the PM’s Office to serve the purpose of executing national initiatives such as these.

“She will come and she will have a staff of people, we will call in everybody together, create consensus and we will do things which have not been done before like opening up databases, letting digital entrepreneurs be able to have payments made easier,” he said.

He went on to stress significance on fixing the digital payment system which he said would play a weighty role in the road to progress.