Fouad Riaz Bajwa
ICT4D Advisor and Researcher
Free and Open Source Software Advocate
Fouad is a renowned international policy and development specialist.
As an accomplished ICT Practitioner, Researcher and Writer, he has advises and consults civil society, public and private sectors, national governments, multilateral and bilateral institutions in the framework of strategic access and use of Information and Communications Technologies for Human Development (ICT4D), ICT Policy, Software for Development, e-Governance, e-Health, Open ICT Ecosystems, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Internet Governance (IG).
During his 12 year career, Fouad has been engaged with sectors including academia, business, media, public sector, civil society both regionally and globally. He is a member of key ICT governance think thanks and serves on the boards of various non-profit organizations around the globe and is a member of the Champions Network of the prestigious global ICT competition and award, the Stockholm Challenge (www.stockholmchallenge.se), is an ICT Advisor to the World Bank Development Gateway Foundation dgCommunity
(http://ict.developmentgateway.org/Community-Teams.11070+M537d2ddfade.0.html?&group_id=148&limit=10)
and member of the Open Source Health Care Alliance (OSHCA-Asia).
His current global ICT Access and Digital Inclusion campaign involves providing 1 billion computers running FOSS to 1 billion the underprivileged people on planet that have yet to use or access computers and the internet. This program is being carried out by the Gerry Morgan Foundation Canada (www.gerrymorganfoundation.org) and Ink Media (www.ink-media.com) where Fouad is responsible for identifying and developing strategic global ICT4D partnerships to meet this goal.
Within Pakistan, Fouad serves on the Working Groups for the IT Policy formulation by the Ministry of IT and Telecom, Government of Pakistan.
He leads activities involving the national ICT think tank and advocacy for ICT for development in South Asia. He is a scholar on Internet Governance, Governance and Institutional Performance Management and an international trainer for e-Governance, e-Government and ICT Applications.
Fouad believes that information and knowledge enabled by technology can save lives and is a vehicle for overcoming poverty and engaging nations within the drive for becoming knowledge economies, therefore he catalyzes resource mobilization for such efforts. In this regard, he devised the FOSS Models for "Telecenters & Community Resource and Information Centers in Pakistan" under the World Bank Universal Service Fund for Pakistan (http://www.ifossf.org/files/Telecenters%20in%20Pakistan%20Volume%201.pdf).
