Chairman FBR Mohammed Jehanzeb Khan has called for aligning ways to broaden the tax net through data integration, big data and data sciences that can help identify tax evaders. He underscored the importance of sharing data and finding out what data was available since various departments were using their own data sets for several purposes. "The first step is to understand what data is available and then work on a plan for sharing this data amongst the stakeholders," he said, adding there was also a need to understand what protocols would be required and challenged overcome in achieve the desired goals and objectives.

He said this while making a keynote address to the inaugural session of the 1st Information & Communication Technology Workshop organized by the Federal Board of Revenue in collaboration with the World Bank at a local hotel.

The objective of the workshop was to bring all public sector organizations on one platform to find out ways for assisting each other and benefiting from the available data sources to boost revenue generation and resource mobilization.

Representatives from all provincial revenue authorities, NADRA, Punjab Information Technology Board, Federal Investigation Agency, Controller General of Accounts, provincial revenue boards, provincial information technology boards, Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan and National Information Technology Board, Capital Development Authority attended the one-day moot.

In his address, the Chairman FBR told the participants FBR had been working on preparing the ICT Strategy Document to address FBR's development needs for the next three years and a prospective plan on the IT and communication side for the next 10 years. "A systematic plan with a clear roadmap will help identify what skill sets are to be learnt and honed and what resources are required for the purpose," he added. He also thanked the experts from World Bank for attending the workshop.-PR

Copyright Business Recorder, 2018