Completion of e-governance project in National Assembly ordered

ISLAMABAD: Speaker National Assembly, Asad Qaiser on Monday underscored the need to adopt innovative and modern technologies for meeting new challenges and ensuring socio-economic development of the country.

The speaker, who was chairing a meeting of National Information Technology Board (NITB) here at Parliament House, directed NITB to complete e-governance project in the National Assembly at the earliest so as to take full advantage of the system.

He said the project would help minimize expenses being incurred on papers while at the same time, it would promote austerity initiative of the present government.

The speaker said in addition to improving governance through greater transparency and accountability of government functionaries, digitization helps governments to ensure efficient and effective provision of services at a fraction of costs incurred by providing the same services through traditional means.

The speaker was assured that all efforts would be made to introduce modern technologies at the National Assembly Secretariat which would further improve its functioning.

Asad Qaiser was elected as the Speaker of the National Assembly in August, beating PPP stalwart Khursheed Shah, who was fielded by an alliance of the opposition parties.

Qaiser received 176 votes to be elected to the speakership, whereas Shah got 146 votes. The election took place through a secret ballot. A total of 330 votes were cast, out of which 322 were accepted and eight were rejected

Qaiser belongs to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, and is the 21st Speaker of  National Assembly. He had served as the Speaker of the provincial assembly of KP for five years from June 2013 to May 2018.