Internet Computer for Nations

Hello, there we go. Dr Sahel, thank you. I was trying to struggle to find your name on the list. So my apologies for keeping you all waiting. We have our full ensemble now. So I'm happy to introduce Dr Sahel Munir from the Pakistan Digital Authority. Thank you for joining us. Dr Sahel. I'm also joined by Ali Al-Zahari from the UNDP. Matt Grogon from OpenChet and Pierre Samities from Definity Foundation. So welcome all. Thank you. We're going to run through a schedule of discussing everything to do with the Pakistan Cloud Engine that we've been working on. We're going to cover the sovereign National Messenger app and caffeine and the work we're doing with UNDP. And I really hope you enjoy this session. We'll try and keep it to time. I feel we've got a lot to unpack here. So please bear with us and I'll try to keep us to time. So first things first, I want to open up with my first question to Dr Sahel Munir. We've been working with him closely for the past few months on this project. Dr Sahel, you're responsible for the delivery of Pakistan's National Digital Master Plan. I've heard a lot about this and I hope other people on the call have also heard lots about this. But just for those who haven't heard much, can you give us a quick summary of what that entails. So much much more for inviting me and hello everybody. Thanks for being here. So we can put the master plan basically Pakistan we took in approach that now when we have to do digital transformation or actually benefit from data transformation or rather AI transformation. It could be completely new way of doing business. So how do we approach this. One thing was absolutely clear, there can be such initiative would be successful. Only if it happens at the whole of government or the whole of nation level. And secondly, it has to happen across all sectors. So with that, we started our digital nation Pakistan initiative. And the idea was that across the three pillars, which is around us in the digital world. There's a digital society, digital economy, which basically is not really digitizing the current economic sectors, but also looking at the digital native economy and how AI disrupts it. And last was digital governance, how do we reimagine governance in an AI native era. So with that objective, we established a super-napix party in the country, which included all of the chief executives of the country and the jurisdictions, meaning the prime minister of the country as well as the chief ministers, which are the heads of the provinces. The mandate was that they were to sign off on to the overall digital transformation rather AI transformation across the government. And we established a body, which was this Pakistan digital authority, which I'm sharing. And the biggest mandate was to look at all initiatives that have to happen across the country. And what are the key enablers that are required. So that was the digital national digital master plan. So what it entails was the, the vision and the strategic objectives that we have where the country should be. In the next five or in the next 10 years, how do we achieve that with digital transformation. We took the practice sectors, for example, agriculture, health, real estate. So we identified 12 critical sectors and we started preparing digital transformation strategies for those sectors. But then it's really weird. There's a play for AI or digital asset for that matter. As well as what would be the enablers that are required. So if we are to bring in transformation across the real estate sector. And we do understand that digital virtual assets create a huge opportunity across that sector. But that may require certain legislative amendments, especially bringing in a real estate regulator as an example. So we basically started saying, okay, what do we want to achieve plans for a strategic initiatives for every sector. And what are the enablers that are required. And then at the same time to for this AI native future, what kind of standards, what is that enterprise architecture that should be established as well as if there are any regulatory roles that have to be played. So around data governance around AI safeguards. So this collectively is the function of the national digital master plan which we are leading. It's not really like a planned op-emate. It's really the function of the master plan that we've established in the country. So any initiative now that is taken in the country, there is that element of digital transformation. How does it support digital transformation or AI led transformation. And that becomes a gate for any initiative to be approved. And then this master plan is something which my authority that I'm leading is. The wording is co-creating with the stakeholders. And the Pakistan National Digital Commission, which is the prime minister and other chief objectives of the country. They in a way approve and endorse it so that we are able to then implement it across the country. So a key part of this. And it's very talking about technology in a blares the whole area of digital assets or virtual assets or transferable assets. How do that enable opportunities. So it's really looking at opportunities that they're free is presenting. And AI is presenting and how does that help us. The short cycle some of the path that we are going to traverse on this. Fantastic. So I think I think for all our listeners, you know what you've given there is a is the size of the scope for this and the size of the opportunity for digital transformation in Pakistan and beyond. So you and I had the chance a few weeks ago when we got together to film a short video for the UNDP. And you said to me, you know, the pdf is running a lot of technology behind Pakistan's dish for public infrastructure. And that the Internet computer cloud engine is an important part of that. Can you just say a little bit more about that and where does that sit in the plan you just described. So thank you for reminding me because I missed that. You know, in any economy, there is the physical public infrastructure, the roads and the bridges. The same way it is there for the digital public infrastructure, which are the building blocks. Two of the most important rails, which form part of digital public infrastructure are the rails that are there for data and rails that are there for money. How do you money, you know, my account to your account, sub-second delivery, a lot of jurisdictions have been implementing that. And the very key part is how do you enable exchange of data under certain governments. And that's the that's one of the key part, which is the data exchange here. So we are basically, that's one of the key responsibilities to build this data exchange there. We have recently published the reference architecture for it. It's branded as what salvage means to connect in many of the Middle Eastern and Old do language. And that's one key part plus what we also did was that there are going to be certain enabling layers that would be required in today's era. A cognitive capabilities or intelligence layer as one of the key layers for data exchange. These are shared capabilities that would be required. Same is the case with when I'm talking about data exchange. There are certain building blocks that would be needed. Any use case that many of the use cases that you look at, for example, may require prominence may require track and trace capability. May require ID capability, virtual or, you know, verifiable potentials capability. So these are some poor capabilities, which would be required in many of the use cases. So the idea was to build those capabilities as central common, not central but rather as common capabilities, which you will build upon your use cases on top of it. A key part of that was also a robust life will. I would infrastructure when I look at most of the digital government applications. A key part that always is missing is trust in the transaction. You know, Estonia had done a great job when they build their provenance layer so that every transaction has a clear program for keep moving trust in it. So we, when we started building this grounds up, the idea was that at least that provenance layer has to be there so every transaction has that trust element into it. So naturally distributed ledger or blockchain capability. So that was the reason why we became one of the key requirements of building this. We also wanted to create public cloud or government cloud infrastructure, which will, where we will enforce whatever the data given and standards that are going to be in place. So that was the origin of this discussion with ICP to explore ICP as a potential candidate for this building. And that's when we started back in February this year with ICP to build a cloud infrastructure in Pakistan. We commissioned a few notes. Look at live have taken a lot of test use cases on top of it. There is a, as an example, we have worked on a complaint management platform that is now sitting on top of running on top of it. We are experimenting with multiple other data exchange capabilities on it. And as you, I think it's part of the agenda today. There was a. Public communication, public communication, a sovereign app that was built on top of it, which we are in. I would say post violent stage. That's fair to pay in group communications. That's what you built on top of this. So far. I think yeah, you, you, you, you come in. Yeah, I want to get into those things as well during the course of the, the call. And just to echo what you said there, the trust element comes in fantastically. And also it opens the door to too many capabilities. And you're already just hinted at some of those as well. But I think something we should be very clear and I think this is a phenomenal thing to add here is, you know, the Pakistan took this on before any other government. So I wanted to ask you, what has moving early given you? Sorry, can you repeat your question? Yeah, of course. But more than anything, I just want to know what was the that first mover advantage that first given that you moved early and were the first people to work on this. What opportunities has that given you? I mean, I mean, I mean, so this is we were experimenting with technology. You're in or, you know, ICP and definitely interest, definitely was the being the first mover. So a lot of support is what I had from the entire different and ICP team and community on this. So that was good. We were actually the first mover we were experimenting initially. We took a decision of moving forward after going to the coronet.