Covid-19 has severely disrupted the everyday lives of the masses and this includes easy and effective access to basic education. This has called for effective and reformative changes in the services provided by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan. This was communicated by the Chair of HEC Dr Tariq Banuri during a virtual meeting of all staff. The organization expressed its commitment to use this revamp to instil automation and simplification of its processes and systems to effectively help the students and faculty members of all universities. The re-engineering of the organization’s processes will be undertaken with consideration the requirements due to the pandemic as well.

Dr Tariq Banuri also said that all divisions are required to ensure complete virtual readiness and access, by taking advantage of other HEC programs, especially the Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS), the National Academy of Higher Education (NAHE), and the Education Testing Council (ETC). HEC is already working on global cooperation to deploy IT support essential for distance learning.

NAHE designed and conducted a National Faculty Development Programme earlier this year. HEMIS is working on collecting data from staff and students, after already collecting the data from faculty members of all universities. ETC is working to come up with a hybrid system of evaluation and assessment while ensuring the effective use of information technology embedded in it.