ABOUT US
Leveraging technology to catalyze development in the public sector.
WHO WE ARE
The Technology for People Initiative (TPI) is an applied research and design unit housed in the Department of Computer Science and based at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). Working directly with public sector managers, or indirectly through development partners, we study problems of governance in the public sector and attempt to design solutions to address them using technology as an enabler. Our final output is usually a working prototype deployed in the field that demonstrates the proposed mechanism and allows the stakeholders to visualize the intended benefits. We collaborate regularly and closely with teams from other disciplines, especially economics, and operate on unrestricted or restricted grants from local or international donors.
TPI was founded in 2012 by Dr. Sohaib Khan, Associate Professor of Computer Science, and Asim Fayaz. Within four years, it has successfully completed around 13 projects worth $ 1 million which include law & order, socio-economic, governance and others. It currently has partnered with 10 organizations including donors such as DFID, World Bank, GIZ, Google etc.
WHAT WE DO
We help enable collaboration between the academia, i.e., faculty and students, and the government, i.e., civil servants and bridge a mechanism to connect the two parties, incubate innovative out-of-the-box ideas leveraging multidisciplinary resources, develop working prototypes using technological expertise and support their dissemination and advocacy leading to some public sector solution. We promote apart from faculty and students, graduates from LUMS and other universities to join this new field so the government can access better capacity than what is readily available in the market. We provide a platform where we explore new ideas with public sector champions which can not be readily fund through regular procurement mechanisms because of lack of clarity upfront as well as other government bans and audit concerns. LUMS, being the premier educational institution of the country, has a privilege of supporting public sector through unit of this nature.
VISION
TPI seeks to make public sector institutions in Pakistan as informed, inclusive and responsive as possible to achieve good governance.
MISSION
TPI is an unit for applied research which aims to improve service delivery and access to data by leveraging technology in the public sector.