Digitization and technology hold the promise of progress and prosperity for almost every country including Pakistan. Information Technology has become a fundamental part of industry and manufacturing.
The technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, robotics, automation, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, mobility, and others continue to have a growing effect on society, economy, and environment.
Moreover, the process of rapid digitization has transformed almost everything on the face of the earth from physical to software-controlled – economy to education, healthcare to market-customer relations, and government-citizen interaction to banking.
The incumbent government has taken the initiative to upgrade digital banking infrastructure and ease the conditions and exhausting paperwork for digital services such as e-payments, online transactions and the issuance of credit cards, and their use in online stores or in-store shopping, at petrol pumps, online utility bill payments, and university fee payment gateways, etc.
The process of digitization can help grow the economy more quickly, fuel innovations, as well as the business environment. This in return could alleviate poverty by creating new jobs for the fresh graduates and young entrepreneurs of the country.
The Digital Pakistan Initiative has created hope that the government is making serious efforts to promote digital technology in the country. However, Pakistan needs to organize and enhance the skills, expertise, and knowledge for digital transformation in all walks of life.
The digital landscape has grown tremendously in Pakistan with a population of over 200 million people.
The country has over 165 million mobile subscribers, 70 million active internet users, and 60 million smartphone users.
According to statistical data of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s telecom indicators, the number of mobile phone users in Pakistan has crossed 165 million while the provision of 4G/LTE services in remote areas of Pakistan has also made a significant increase in overall 3G/4G subscribers, as the number of 3G and 4G users in Pakistan crossed 70 million.
With an increase of 0.173 million users in just a month, it has become evident that 4G users in Pakistan are increasing at a rapid pace and will soon take over the 3G market after the launch of 5G services. In an increasingly digital world, connecting people to the world can open up new vistas and bridge the gap of inequality both on social and economic fronts.
As internet penetration has gone up to 70 percent in the country, several case studies emerge that people successfully achieve their ambitions and turn their dreams into a reality.
Similarly, the digital medium is considered cost-effective with a wider reach which comes with many benefits — people around the globe get easy access to information anytime and anywhere through multiple digital devices.
Likewise, the digital means of marketing and communication are also considered quicker, result driven, and adaptable. Deputy Coordinator, E-Governance, Performance Management & Reforms Unit (PMRU), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Dr. Akif Khan said that Pakistan’s first initiative was the launch of Pakistan Citizen Portal where citizens can make access to eight thousand officials. “As far as the digital transformation of Pakistan is concerned; it is one of the biggest case studies with a 94% resolution rate of the cases,” he added. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ‘App Desk,’ Muhammad Tanveer Khan said that digitization makes public service delivery more efficient and speedy by ensuring ‘one window operations’ of different official tasks — taking less time and effort. It also decreases the chances of deliberate/un-deliberate human errors and the online record could be easily authenticated from any part of the world, he added.
Majid Khan, an Islamabad based IT expert said that due to the pandemic, a spike was witnessed in the sale and purchase of smartphones and laptops for online teaching and learning in the country. He said that people in general and students, in particular, had learned a great deal about new software and productive use of android phones and computer technology.
During the coronavirus, when people were confined to their homes, the internet has given relief to continue working from home by connecting them online with a large number of people across the globe

Two UCLA computer scientists have shown that existing compilers, which tell quantum computers how to use their circuits to execute https://www.youtube.com/quantum programs, inhibit the computers’ ability to achieve optimal performance. Specifically, their research has revealed that improving quantum compilation design could help achieve computation speeds up to 45 times faster than currently demonstrated.
The computer scientists created a family of benchmark quantum circuits with known optimal depths or sizes. In computer design, the smaller the circuit depth, the faster a computation can be completed. Smaller circuits also imply more computation can be packed into the existing quantum computer. Quantum computer designers could use these benchmarks to improve design tools that could then find the best circuit design.
“We believe in the ‘measure, then improve’ methodology,” said lead researcher Jason Cong, a Distinguished Chancellor’s Professor of Computer Science at UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. “Now that we have revealed the large optimality gap, we are on the way to develop better quantum compilation tools, and we hope the entire quantum research community will as well.”
Cong and graduate student Daniel (Bochen) Tan tested their benchmarks in four of the most used quantum compilation tools. A study detailing their research was published in IEEE Transactions on Computers, a peer-reviewed journal.
Tan and Cong have made the benchmarks, named QUEKO, open source and available on the software repository GitHub.
Quantum computers utilize quantum mechanics to perform a great deal of computations simultaneously, which has the potential to make them exponentially faster and more powerful than today’s best supercomputers. But many issues need to be addressed before these devices can move out of the research lab

of how quantum circuits work, tiny environmental changes, such as small temperature fluctuations, can interfere with quantum computation. When that happens, the quantum circuits are called decoherent — which is to say they have lost the information once encoded in them.
“If we can consistently halve the circuit depth by better layout synthesis, we effectively double the time it takes for a quantum device to become decoherent,” Cong said.
“This compilation research could effectively extend that time, and it would be the equivalent to a huge advancement in experimental physics and electrical engineering,” Cong added. “So we expect these benchmarks to motivate both academia and the industry to develop better layout synthesis tools, which in turn will help drive advances in quantum computing.”
Cong and his colleagues led a similar effort in the early 2000s to optimize integrated circuit design in classical computers. That research effectively pushed two generations of advances in computer processing speeds, using only optimized layout design, which shortened the distance between the transistors that comprise the circuit. This cost-efficient improvement was achieved without any other major investments in technological advances, such as physically shrinking the circuits themselves.
“Quantum processors in existence today are extremely limited by environmental interference, which puts severe restrictions on the length of computations that can be performed,” said Mark Gyure, executive director of the UCLA Center for Quantum Science and Engineering, who was not involved in this study. “That’s why the recent research results from Professor Cong’s group are so important because they have shown that most implementations of quantum circuits to date are likely extremely inefficient and more optimally compiled circuits could enable much longer algorithms to be executed. This could result in today’s processors solving much more interesting problems than previously thought. That’s an extremely important advance for the field and incredibly exciting

Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry says Chinese companies are interested in the relocation of their factories to Pakistan because of the US-China trade war and believes the country is set to take a major benefit.
Flanked by Minister for Science and Technology Minister for Energy Omar Ayub Khan, Fawad Chaudhry announced the Alternative and Renewable Energy (ARE) Policy 2020 said the relocation of Chinese factories would benefit Pakistan’s manufacturing sector.
Both the ministers shared details of tax facilities offered to investors in the policy and said power plants will be inducted on open competitive bidding for lowest tariff and technology transfer.
Under the new policy, they said the government would increase the share of ARE in total power supply to 20 percent by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030.
They hoped the induction of power plants on open competitive bidding would bring down solar and wind tariffs to less than four cents per unit.
Key features of the policy:

1. the investment would be solicited on a competitive bid for the lowest cost instead of upfront or cost-plus based tariff under all previous power policies
2. the government would decide on the annual and three-year basis about the quantity of additional power requirement as before but it would be decided jointly by the four provinces, Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan at a steering committee as to how much share be allocated to solar, wind, waste to energy or other technology and what should be their location
3. the currency devaluation factor would be taken care of in bids for tariff
4. incentives for technology transfer for local manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines and all related equipment for job creation for which Ministry of Science and Technology was finalising quality standards
5. bidding would bebased on two to three year forward looking energy requirements and on take and pay basis without allowing capacity payment price to ensure that tariff is paid only for the electricity purchased and not for capacity availability
   It was unearthed in the moot that three top Chinese companies and a leading European manufacturer had approached the government for setting up of manufacturing units for solar and wind equipment.

Mapping of the Nosham reaches completion

The geological experts have completed 100 percent mapping of the Nosham area of Balochistan under a coal exploration and evaluation project.
This project is included in the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) with an allocation of Rs 6.524 million for 2020-21.
The Rs 42.318 million project titled “Exploration and Evaluation of Coal in Nosham and Bahlol Areas, Balochistan” had been approved in 2017 which made significant progress during the last two years, a senior official said.
Elaborating the updated physical progress, he said the initial study of maps, toposheets, aerial photographs, and satellite imageries had been completed. While data had been transferred from aerial photographs/satellite imageries onto toposheets, he added.
Preliminary reconnaissance geological mapping has been commenced. 100 percent Geological Mapping of Nosham area has been completed and five stratigraphic sections have been measured, besides purchasing different field and lab items. Whereas, a compilation of field data, analysis and integration of data to prepare the required geological maps was in progress.
“Drilling of 1st borehole (BNCP#01) at Nosham area, District Barkhan has been completed to the depth of 297 meters, where coal seams encountered at different depths. Geological logging of exploratory borehole/logs and Geophysical Survey (Resistivity) has also been completed in the project area,” officials said. Drilling engineers and other technical staff are busy in drilling operations for the next borehole. “Compilation of geological map and report is in progress.” The experts believed that the project investigations would result in proving more than 20 million tonnes of coal worth over Rs 2000 million at the current market rate. — APP