An accomplished ICT professional, visionary administrator, seasoned mentor, and ace entrepreneur, Saima R. Shaikh has over 20 years of extensive portfolio in the IT industry with remarkable achievements to her credit. Bringing her expertise and innovation to work, she commanded various ICT interventions in different Provincial and Federal Departments through Business Development, Business Process Reengineering (BPR), and Digitization & Automation in Government to Citizen (G2C) and Government to Business (G2B) domains.
Serving Punjab IT Board since 2010, Saima Shaikh has been the driving force behind the success of multiple projects and initiatives. ‘Ease of Doing Business’ (EODB), a flagship project carried out under her supervision, launched in Punjab, integrated with concerned Federal authorities, also rolled out in Sindh & Balochistan, improved Pakistan’s ranking in ‘Starting a Business’. ‘Hajj Management System’ (HMS) enabling complete end-to-end automation of Hajj operations is the pinnacle of her journey at PITB, acknowledged globally and also has been adopted by a fellow Muslim country. Streamlined, strengthened, and enhancing over time, ‘Punjab’s Web Presence’ - the first step towards e-Governance, is the culmination of her dream as she coined this idea back then and led it successfully for over a decade. She is the voice of PITB for its ICT and e-Governance initiatives at recurrent interactive sessions with Senior Civil Servants across the country, imparting pertinent knowledge for improving public service delivery.
As Director General (Business Development & Training), Saima Shaikh leads PITB’s business growth strategy with a strong belief in the need for developing a network with the existing IT industry, assisting them to lead this landscape. She looks forward to mutual collaborations with key players of the industry through joint ventures/consortiums based on knowledge and tech sharing, providing them support to implement and adapt PITB-developed products and systems.
A LUMS graduate with an MS degree in Computer Science and an undergrad in Electrical Engineering from UET, Lahore; Saima held leadership roles in the earlier stretch of her career. Being a staunch believer in self-reliance, she started as an entrepreneur and cofounded LumenSoft Technologies in 2000. With the ambition to make a difference in the education sector, she joined Kinnaird College for Women in 2004 and led the Department of Computer Science, where her contributions to transforming the very department are second to none. She also has the credit of serving her alma mater, LUMS, as Adjunct Faculty.