Ehsaas develops IT policies vault

Islamabad:Aligning Information Technology security controls holistically with international security standards, Ehsaas has developed an IT policies vault, which is a repository of a set of IT infrastructure, IT application, databases, policies, and procedures for systematically managing the programme’s sensitive data and protecting its information assets.

The IT centered reform has been introduced to facilitate digital transfer of benefits to the beneficiaries in a transparent manner, to ensure data integrity and to hedge against abuse and hacking.

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Dr Sania Nishtar, in a statement, said, Forty IT policies are being executed stringently along the lines of Ehsaas Governance and Integrity Policy.

As Ehsaas continues to strengthen its data and systems, it is important to mention the significance of IT policies vault to setting up the foundation for future social protection programs, for developing the socioeconomic registry, and launching cash transfer programmes.

She said the recently introduced IT safeguards were the critical building blocks, which were now allowing them to deliver the Ehsaas programmes with enhanced integrity, transparency and accountability.

With regard to the data governance, she said, a set of policies had been developed and implemented on data acceptable use, data backup, data classification and monitoring, data handling and data access control.

Regarding data management, Dr Sania said data availability management policy, change management process, data labelling procedure, data retention policy, software policy and data backup procedures were introduced.

Similarly to reinforce data security, she added, several important policies including information security policy, network security policy, physical data security policy, password policy, antivirus and malware policy, and cryptographic policy had been executed.