The IT Department (ITD) of the Government of Sindh is responsible for maintaining all information technology operations of the Government of Sind the second most populous province of Pakistan. While ITD is responsible for IT operations and sourcing of new automation solutions to better serve Government of Sind and to further its mission of creating a knowledge based society, it is also often called upon to display innovation for any pressing problems that Government of Sind may deem fit for it to address.

The Government of Sind secretariat is where the main bureaucracy leadership that runs Sind works. Situated in the main part of Karachi it is the heart of governance for the province. Four multi-storied buildings make up the secretariat. The Chief secretary did not have visibility into the attendance and time management of employees of all departments under him.

Furthermore Karachi is a teeming metropolis of over 20 million people. The security challenges emanating from it are multi dimensional and complex. Above all they are persistent. While security protection and perimeter security measures are in place there was a need to authenticate access to designated employees in highly sensitive areas like the secretariat.

The solution needed to be sophisticated enough to be able to accurately identify an employee 100% of the time, yet not be a burden on the exchequer.

InfoTech after great R & D managed to find the balance between a solution that delivered great value and cutting edge technology, which being scalable and future proof.

InfoTech identified Retina scanners as the only device capable of meeting the 100% accuracy criteria to be used for Time In and Time Out. These were than integrated into a new Cisco network. The network sent data to IBM servers that ran middleware over an Oracle Database. Full analytics dashboards for relevant stakeholders were enabled over this setup. IBM storage was used for data archiving.

InfoTech itself using .NET made the middleware for processing entry exit data and generating reports. Dashboards for displaying the customized reporting using Java were also made by InfoTech.

The leadership of the Sindh bureaucracy was delighted with the results. They now had clear visibility into employee movement and workday entry and exit data. This allowed them to enforce time management policies, which subsequently led to increased productivity.

Department heads of each division especially benefited from this solution as they were relying on registers of manually taken attendance for relevant data. They now had visibility and reporting that allowed them to address any lapses or trends affecting productivity.

Security was enhanced and the relevant stakeholders in charge of security expressed satisfaction with how perimeter and physical security measures were complemented by the new biometric access control.

Sindh Government ITD specifically built the RFP that would qualify companies with expertise at building solutions that cut across networking, applications and high end computing but also had a track record of delivering solutions that delivered extreme value.

InfoTech was chosen because it fulfilled those criteria and because it had a demonstrated track record of working with cutting edge emerging technologies. InfoTech also had its own CMM Level 3 software house that allowed it to add a necessary dashboarding and analytics layer and relevant middleware to enable a seamless solution.