Atta terms converging, emerging technologies as need of the hour
By Ali Imran

ISLAMABAD—The third international Workshop on Frontiers of Information Technology–FIT 2005 was organized by COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad on December 28-29, 2005. The Workshop held twice before in the yester years, has assumed importance of national significance,. It has provided a regular forum of IT professionals for discussing the latest developments in the field of IT and for building consensus on various aspects of IT and it further implementations.
The 3rd International Workshop on IT holds high profile stature. It includes presentation of regular papers as well as talks of 15 eminent speakers from leading International universities such as University such as University of Florida USA, University of Maryland USA etc. The major areas of focus during two day workshop were Communication and Networking, IT Security, Education Technology and IT Applications, ICT in the Developing Countries, Distributive and Collaborative Computing and IT based Applications including Digital Government, e-learning and bioinformatics.
On the first day of the workshop, Lt Gen (Rtd) Javed Ashraf Qazi, Federal Minister for Education, was the Chief Guest. The Closing Ceremony was honored by the presence of Prof Dr. Atta ur Rahman. Prof Dr. Atta ur Rahman while addressing the gathering, emphasized the need of bringing about required integration among the new technologies. He opined that convergence of emerging technologies is one of the growing phenomenon of the new times and it has pronounced socio-economic impact worldwide. Our economic sustainability hinges upon building the necessary infrastructure and mobilizing the resources in such a way that this intermingling of IT with Telecommunication and media coexists in perfect harmony. He laid stress upon the importance of Information Technology and its growth and appreciated such collaborative efforts in the form of workshops, seminars and other such activities.
The Workshop was attended by educationists, eminent academicians, erudite scholars, IT professionals and users of IT from industry. The workshop would indeed go a long way in fortifying the government’s efforts to promote IT in all walks of life.