Pakistan Railways (PR) is not only far behind other regional carriers in terms of revenues but also lags in the field of information and communication technology (ICT). The department is apparently unable to meet the IT requirements and that is why it has outsourced its website development to an Indian company, despite having an army of IT professionals. An analytical inspection of the PR website (www.pakrail.com) shows that it is a simple content management system (CMS), which can easily be developed by an IT student in merely a couple of weeks, but the Railways signed a contract for website development project with a Bangalore-based software company, iVision Information Technologies.
The source code of the website indicates that the ‘efficient’ programmers and developers in the PR’s Directorate of Information Technology have attempted to hide their inability by disabling or remarking the code that reveals the original credit to an Indian web development company. The code suggests that the site was developed by an Indian company, www.ivisiontechnologies.com. However, the original link does not indicate the origin of the website development company, but when someone point its browser to www.ivisiontechnologies.com, it automatically redirect a visitor to the Indian software house’s website www.ivision.in, which has offices in Bangalore, Mysore and Hyderabad.
It is interesting to note that the Railways in an official document, which is available on its website, claims that the PR’s Directorate of Information Technology is located at the Railways headquarters at Hameed Bin Badess Road (Empress Road) and has eight divisions. However, contrary to fact, the official document indicates that the main functions of the directorate are to maintain the running applications and to automate the main core activities of the Railways.
Speaking to Pakistan Today, a software engineer at Advanced Network Solutions, Yasir Mujeeb, said the Railways authorities might not consider it awkward, but it was a stigma on local IT professionals and industry. He underscored that Pakistani IT professionals were second to none in all fields of ICT, but both the government and private institutes had to trust their capabilities. To inquire for the official version, the scribe contacted Railways Director Public Relations Mohsin Yousaf, but he expressed his inability to comment on the story while describing it a ‘technical issue’. However, he disclosed that the website was developed during the tenure of Rizwan, In Charge IT Directorate.
He suggested that Director Information Technology Humayun Rasheed would be the right person to comment on the issue. Speaking to Pakistan Today, Humayun agreed that previously the iVision Technologies website link was available on the PR’s website, but it had been removed. He argued that it was not understandable how the said link came in the website source code. He claimed that the original source code might have been acquired from the iVision, but it was a Pakistani company.
Similarly, the scribe also contacted iVision Technologies Director Operations Karthik Ramachandra in Bangalore, India. He said he knew about the fact that Pakistan Railways official website www.pakrail.com had their website link in the source code. But surprisingly, he denied that iVision Technologies had any relationship with the PR or its website. He said his company had already sent a number of emails to the Pakistan Railways to remove their website link from its official web portal, but the links were not removed nor did anybody bother to respond.