ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Information Technology Anusha Rehman Khan has said that establishment of National Data Centre (NDC) is a step towards achievement of accelerated digitisation. In pursuance of prime minister’s vision of ‘Digital Pakistan’, National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC), under the guidance of Ministry of IT and Telecom, has established a cloud-based NDC for the government and public sector entities. Addressing the participants of the NDC inaugural ceremony, Anusha Rehman said, “It is a historic occasion for the government and NTC towards achieving yet another milestone.” The inauguration ceremony was attended by senior officials of the federal and provincial governments, ICT professionals from public/private sector and CEOs of telecom companies. Anusha Rehman said it would be the first cloud-based NDC, which is meant to assist the government entities host their data and applications in a secure environment, adding that this data centre is modular, scalable and highly secure. “We have witnessed a dynamic revolution in the sphere of IT and telecom sector, our broadband penetration, which was less than 3% in 2013, has crossed 24% now. We are already working to provide ICT services with a special focus on unserved and underserved areas of the country and there will be a complete roll-out by December, 2018,” the minister said. Anusha Rehman said under the ICT For Girls programme, around 100 schoolgirls in rural areas would be equipped with technical training. She congratulated the MoIT legislators’ team for preparing a comprehensive Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act. The objective of the law is to provide secure online usage to the people, she added. On the occasion, NTC Chairman Brig (r) Viqar Rashid Khan said NTC has made record growth and expansion in the development of its network and infrastructure during last two years. He said NTC expanded its presence from 54 districts in 2013 to 84 cities and sites in 2016, adding that around 36% growth was observed in broadband connections. It is pertinent to mention that NTC is amongst those few organisations that has reorganised itself according to the demands of the market and public sector entities and became profitable. Today, NTC stands totally reinvented and transformed, traversing a long course with state of the art network exchanges. This data centre is designed meeting Tier-III standards and would provide services like Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). It would help the government facilitate e-governance, e-commerce and e-health etc.