While one appreciates and admires the ambitions of Ms Tania Aidrus (@taidrus), a few important realities need to be reiterated [Thread]
All this 'Digital Pakistan' campaigning is futile until and unless we have a National Cyber Security Strategy and Policy in place, which could provide an over-arching framework through which R&D programmes, fintech investments and e-governance policymaking can be prioritised.
A higher-level multi-stakeholder policy direction is the basic prerequisite to provide any meaningful long-term guidance. Mere political sloganeering won't yield anything resourceful except short-lived brownie points.
Both the PML-N's Vision 2025 and PTI's Digital Pakistan Policy are incomplete documents filled with basic concepts and little to no mention of how digitisation can be exploited fully in the absence of any cyberspace management framework.
Successive political regimes PPP, PML-N and, so far the PTI, have failed to develop an adequate policy encompassing all aspects of cyberspace, including digitisation efforts, which could foresee the requirements till at least a decade in advance.
Our cyberspace regime is heavily dependent upon the changing whims of foreign OEMs and supply chain vendors who have next-to-zero regard for domestic laws and regulations.
Lastly, one prays that policy measures with positive, long-term national impact are made so we can move beyond self-aggrandisement and showering praises on the ruling political government. Tangible results are expected from a competent technocrat like Ms Aidrus.
@threadreaderapp unroll
