ISLAMABAD: Muhammad Khizer Aziz has been appointed as the Director-General IT Operations of the Election Commission of Pakistan, according to a notification seen by Geo News on Wednesday.
Aziz has been serving the ECP since 2004 when he was first appointed as the Director IT (BS-18) officer 17 years ago.
Eight years later, he was promoted to BS-19 officer rank in January 2012 and was then elevated to the post of DG IT of the ECP (BS-20) in October 2015.
Aziz has headed the IT department of the commission for the last 17 years and is the senior-most officer of the ECP. He has accomplished a leadership programme from the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). His idea to place the electoral rolls, more commonly referred to as the voters' lists, on SMS 8300, gained acceptance from around the world. It certainly made Pakistan a pioneer in the world in this regard.
The idea was appreciated globally to the extent that the International Centre for Parliamentary Studies (ICPS), a London-based organisation awarded the ECP with two international awards, one of which was bestowed on the commission in December 2013 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during an international competition.
As a result of this idea, Pakistan was declared the first country in the world to put all its voters’ data on SMS, making it fully secure and accessible to all.
Similarly, another international award was given to the ECP on creating a voters list following international standards based on CNIC in Cape Town, South Africa, in December 2014.
As far as electoral technologies are concerned, Aziz has been representing Pakistan in several international conferences, seminars and workshops on the matter.
The Organisation of Commonwealth Countries in its report year 2020 acknowledged and appreciated the technological efforts made by the ECP by conducting various pilot projects on EVM, BVM and internet voting in a secure manner.
In the same report, the Commonwealth also recognised the 8300 SMS service which has been successfully operational since the year 2012. The service has been declared the biggest database of electoral rolls, comprising 118 million voters for mobile customers of 169 million in the country.
