PROJECTS OF THE PHIR

1. Transparency Pakistan  (Pakopedia)

This project is being run by Research and Development program of the Institute.

Objective of the Project :  To provide a comprehensive and state of the art  database for research relating to Pakistan. This data base will serve the purpose of a web based encyclopedia for Pakistan called “Pakopedia” in the areas of :

• Politics & Political Science;
• the State & the Government;
• Law & Human Rights;
• Pakistan Studies & History; and
• Mass Communications & International Relations

This web portal will contain authentic information that can be used by any researcher in the world including, politicians, policy makers, academicians, journalists and decision makers alike. This web portal will contain authentic official and historical information and records so that it can used as best available reference source for any high level research. Another important feature of this portal will be its interactive feature which will allow the visitor of the web site to post their comments. These comments will be an added help for the policy studies of Government of Pakistan.

Need : Presently there exists no such web based facility which can serve the purpose of a good researcher. The information that is available about Pakistan is either insufficient or incomplete or even, some times, erroneous; above all it is fragmented and scattered also, which is an further disadvantage.

Outline of the Project : This project will collect, compile and categorize all information and make that information available through a web-portal and its search engine  in one place that is :                         

available anywhere  on the cyberspace , and

digitalize the existing information available in the form of :

• any public document
• National Archive. and
• National Documents.

Benefits of this project: Following are the main benefits of this project:

• Access to information which is otherwise ,almost impossible to get.
• Improve the quality of research.
• It will provide best research tool to academia which may be utilized equally by the  politicians and the policymakers.
• Provide cheap and readily available information.
• Save hundreds of millions of rupees and unlimited man hours.
• The information of this web portal  will help in dissipating many misconceptions of Pakistani policy that exist only due to mis- information, ill information or disinformation.

Who will do it ? A dedicated team of highly skilled professional like experts of IT, academicians and researchers will do this project.

Research and Development :  This project requires following kind of expertise of  high quality research with the help of  :

• experts of cataloging & documentations.
• Through understanding of following topics :
  

                           i) Politics and Policies.
                           ii) Government and Governance.
                           iii) Law and Human Rights.
                           iv) Pak Studies and Pak History.
                           v) Mass Communication & International Relations.

In addition of research this project requires following development:

• Development of web portal.
• Development of database.
• Development of search engine.
• Digitalization of archive.