What we really need to do is to grab USA software and maintenance outsourcing jobs. Right now Indians have almost complete control over it. Export of services from Pakistan can generate tremendous high dollar value .
It would be a good idea for PTI-govt. to organize IT conferences - with intent to gather some of these freelancers together, as well as investors. Pakistan can try to create its own version of Silicon valley. Let's say some of these freelancers group together, pitch ideas, with investors deciding on funding. This can lead to new start-ups and the investors turning towards business ventures instead of the usual real estate plot-dealing, and import-oriented businesses that are dragging the country down.
This however isn't always the case, a cousin of mine (who was a brilliant coder) got H1B visa back in 2001. He worked for Microsoft and Philips Healthcare USA and then later on became CTO of an organization there that has Walmart and Nissan as clients and has done tremendously well. back in 2013 he slowly started shifting the IT part here and now the entire development is done here in Pakistan, the organization is very happy and they say that our engineers and overall infrastructure is much much easier and cheaper to get as compared to India let alone USA. back in 2016 I was an intern there and now that organization has quadrupled in size in just a span of 3 years.
the even better part is, my cousin had a very close Indian friend in USA who started his own organization that provided IT solutions for Old age Healthcare industry and guess what? he himself approached my cousin to start an office in Pakistan and get the entire development done there. I currently work in that organization now, our CEO is Indian and is quite happy with us, since 2017 we kept on scaling and the work just keeps on increasing. The CEO despite being an Indian realizes our business value and gets all the development done from us simply because we are cheaper and skilled (I'm a COMSATS graduate and also am doing MS(Software Engineering) from FAST). I know many FASTIANS who are excellent programmers.
I firmly believe if we have more representation in USA and are portrayed well in USA, we can get massive business here and this certainly would help in reversing our current economic situation.
Since all of you like our idiotic government have decided to ignore the huge economic opportunities that exist from the china us trade war in manufacturing and have decided to concentrate only on Indian style BPO IT Outsourcing.Here are my 2 cents
1.The Reason for India's rise in IT/BPO is a little something called first mover advantage.They identified a market gap in such services and cashed in.By the time Pakistan started developing it's IT capabilities India was already entrenched in the market
2.The traditional model of outsourcing done by large corporations(like TCS and Infosys) is now redundant.It was based on needs of corporations and businesses 20 years ago.Now the trend is microservices and freelancing which BTW Pakistanis have really excelled at.There are more than a million Pakistanis doing this
https://nation.com.pk/19-Sep-2018/1-15m-pakistanis-contribute-to-global-freelance-economy
Not only this but freelancing site Upwork says Pakistanis are third largest in offering their services after USA and India
3.Now that is not to say that the traditional model has finished.Pakistan can still take advantage of that.In fact it does
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1580955/2-pakistan-really-snatching-jobs-india/
But we really need to market ourselves for this
4.Pakistan needs strong anti money laundering laws so that Paypal can come to Pakistan.Then IT in both the traditional corporate model and freelancing microservice model can really boom
5.We also need strong telecom infrastructure.Before CPEC our Fibre optic link was only upto karachi.This destroyed our IT Industry back in 2005
http://www.pakistaneconomist.com/issue2005/issue27/tele.php
This Indian is painfully right
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-business-potential-of-data-centers-in-Pakistan
6.Since the end of musharraf we destroyed the vibrant telecom industry developed under him by taxing it to death.Also PML N Policy of awarding both 3g and 4g licenses at the same time led to much confusion in policy
7.We missed a golden opportunity at developing our tech industry when we refused to sign the Information Technology Agreement(ITA).We could have attached ourselves to global value chains and attracted massive FDI.BTW We can still sign it.There is a new and improved version called ITA 2 .Pakistan should consider it seriously.(Point to be noted:One of the reasons that telecom and IT Boomed under Musharraf was that he abolished duties on most of the products mentioned in ITA)
8.While ITA deals with hardware.In the era of 4g and 5g data is the new gold or "the new oil".While many countries are making data localization laws,Pakistan should do the opposite and allow the free flow of data.According to tech experts those countries will benefit the most in the new wave of outsourcing if they liberally allow data movement.Moreover Pakistan should use it's data as a bargaining chip and get maximum benefits from other countries(Like samlee pointed out above that we should get maximum benefits interms of h1b visas)
9.Right now globally there is a shortage of 2 million network security experts.There are also large gaps in other areas of IT esp Apps development and Big Data(Where our NADRA is a centre of excellence).Pakistan should offer services in terms of manpower export as well as outsourcing
Now here is the big point
10.We should be the first mover in the next big thing.Right now this is the era of 4g and 5g.Now the next big things are AI,M2M learning,VR,NFC(near field communications).We should start developing both the desired infrastructure and human resource in these things so as to gain a competitive edge so that when these things get big we become the global hub for these services.In short we should do what India did back in the 1990s
In the end i would just appeal you guys to read post #32.The opportunities arising are much bigger than just IT and could possibly change the face of our country if we play our cards right
