Is Pakistan’s governance challenge really about data or about the discipline to use it?
For decades we have attributed governance weakness to statistical gaps. We criticised survey delays. We debated census cycles. We invoked data scarcity as structural constraint. Yet today Pakistan produces more information than at any prior point in its institutional history. The national Digital Census of 2023 demonstrated that the state can execute a technologically complex, nationwide enumeration with precision and scale, thanks to a pioneering effort by the national statistical organization, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). Administrative systems across taxation, health, education, energy, social protection, and civil registration generate continuous records. Digital dashboards operate. Data repositories expand. Still, fiscal strain intensifies. Service delivery falters. Citizens wait. The structural deficit is not production of data. It is utilisation.
Pakistan Data Festival 2025 marked a decisive reframing of this reality. Convened by the PBS, the event did not revolve around the celebration of datasets. It confronted the deeper governance question: how does data shape allocation, prioritisation, risk management, and accountability?
The Digital Census 2023 created more than population counts. It produced a geo-referenced national base map, a structured demographic grid capable of hosting administrative data layers across sectors. That base map can guide need identification, optimise subsidy targeting, refine intergovernmental fiscal transfers, strengthen disaster preparedness, and support investment risk assessment. It is a public asset of infrastructural character. Yet infrastructure unused does not reform systems.
DataFest 2025 interrogated this gap. PBS, as steward of the National Statistical System, occupies a pivotal institutional role in this transition. It is not merely a producer of official statistics. It is the potential integrator of fragmented administrative streams. It can harmonise definitions, enforce metadata standards, align classifications, and convene custodial agencies. The six policy dialogues at DataFest operationalised that ambition, each examining a domain where integrated data utilisation can recalibrate governance outcome
The dialogue on fiscal federalism and the National Finance Commission exposed a recurring pattern: episodic data release followed by politicised negotiation. Census figures trigger redistribution debates, then institutional inertia resumes. A more mature model would layer continuous administrative indicators onto the census base map. Dynamic service delivery metrics. Real-time expenditure patterns. Transparent, agreed methodologies. Such integration would not eliminate politics. It would discipline it. It would narrow informational asymmetry and strengthen intergovernmental trust. Data, when institutionalised, stabilises fiscal architecture, the foundation on which the edifice of governance stands.
The education dialogue moved from enrolment expansion to learning efficacy. For years, gross enrolment ratios framed progress narratives. Yet literacy and skills lagged. DataFest pressed a harder proposition: integrate education management systems with labour market datasets. Track learning outcomes against employment absorption. Map competence acquisition across districts. Human capital strategy requires longitudinal intelligence, not attendance statistics. Without data integration, education policy remains supply-driven. With integration, it becomes outcome-oriented, meaningful service delivery.
Labour markets revealed similar structural weakness. Survey-based snapshots capture periodic conditions but fail to illuminate rapid shifts in informality, sectoral contraction, or youth underemployment. Administrative payroll data, social security records, tax filings, and digital transaction footprints offer more immediate signals. Integrated labour intelligence can inform countercyclical policy before unemployment hardens into long-term scarring. Timely data reduces lagged response. Reduced lag improves labour absorption and household economic resilience.
The disaster preparedness dialogue underscored the cost of reactive governance. Pakistan’s climate exposure intensifies. Floods and droughts recur. Yet risk management remains fragmented across meteorological, infrastructure, agricultural, and social databases. Integrated geo-spatial and socio-economic data layers can enable anticipatory planning, targeted mitigation, and calibrated insurance mechanisms. When climate risk maps intersect with demographic vulnerability data, policy can shift from relief expenditure to resilience investment.
The E-Pakistan dialogue addressed digital transformation with necessary realism. Artificial intelligence and digital platforms proliferate, yet institutional fragmentation persists. Technology without governance architecture produces redundancy and opacity. Interoperability standards, ethical safeguards, and shared infrastructure determine whether digital tools generate administrative efficiency or new silos. DataFest clarified that digitalisation is not equivalent to integration. Governance coherence precedes technological optimisation.
The economic growth dialogue completed the structural arc. Aggregate indicators often obscure firm-level productivity constraints and sectoral inefficiencies. Integrated datasets linking trade flows, logistics chains, tax compliance, industrial output, and labour skills can sharpen competitiveness strategy. Investment facilitation depends on credible data environments. Productivity reform depends on granular analysis. Growth policy without integrated data remains aspirational.
Across all six dialogues, one convergence emerged with striking clarity: administrative data must anchor the modernised National Statistical System. Surveys and censuses retain foundational relevance. They provide calibration and representational legitimacy. Yet continuous administrative streams, standardised and quality-assured, enable constant monitoring of services and outcomes. They reduce duplication, lower cost and allow adaptive management rather than retrospective reporting.
However, DataFest 2025 did not conflate potential with readiness. Administrative integration demands institutional reform: standardisation of definitions, harmonisation of classifications, investment in data quality assurance and, above all legal, clarity regarding custodianship and access. Without these prerequisites, integration remains rhetorical. More critically, integration requires incentive realignment.
Why would ministries share data absent demonstrable benefit? Why would agencies harmonise systems without political mandate? Data collaboration requires business logic, efficiency gains, fiscal savings, reduced leakage and enhanced credibility. When integrated datasets demonstrably improve allocation precision or reduce disaster expenditure, utilisation ceases to be optional; it becomes optimal. In a constrained fiscal environment, this logic intensifies. Data systems must justify themselves in cost-benefit terms. Does integrated fiscal data reduce waste? Does anticipatory risk modelling lower recovery expenditure? Does labour intelligence reduce policy misalignment? When the answer is affirmative, data becomes multiplier, not overhead; valuable, not wasteful.
The architecture of DataFest reinforced this seriousness. Six high-level policy dialogues provided strategic framing. Seventy-eight technical workshops across six concurrent workstations delivered applied skill transfer. Fifty-nine institutions exhibited platforms and tools in a data marketplace that translated abstraction into application. Universities from Islamabad, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Balochistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan engaged in analytics competitions and poster presentations. The ecosystem extended beyond bureaucracy into academia, industry and innovation.
This breadth matters. Data ecosystems thrive when producers, users, analysts, and future professionals converge.Yet, the deeper question remains institutional culture. For decades, data production primarily served compliance hierarchies. Ministries reported upward. Donor frameworks required indicators. Files circulated. Output metrics accumulated. What rarely occurred was horizontal integration across silos. Data informed reporting more than decision.
DataFest 2025 challenged that inertia.
It repositioned data utilisation as governance infrastructure. Policy credibility increasingly depends on data credibility. Fiscal discipline depends on integrated information. Accountability depends on transparent metrics. When data fails to inform allocation, clinics lack medicines. When labour intelligence fails to guide strategy, youth unemployment rises. When climate data remains siloed, disasters devastate communities. Data unused extends vulnerability.
The pathway forward is neither abstract nor radical. Institutionalise data inputs within Annual Development Plans and PSDP cycles. Pilot administrative integration in priority sectors. Build executive-level data literacy among secretaries. Empower PBS formally as system integrator. Embed data governance within public sector reform. Establish structured research pipelines between universities and ministries. Monitor progress annually. These are governance decisions, not technological gambits. Data production is technical capacity. Data utilisation is institutional will.
Pakistan now stands at a strategic threshold. The Digital Census demonstrated operational competence. Administrative systems generate continuous information. Analytical talent exists across universities and the private sector. What remains decisive is whether leadership demands integration before allocation, evidence before expenditure, outcomes before optics. Because governance improves not when data is archived, but when it is embedded. A state that counts without integrating stagnates. A state that measures without utilising drifts. A state that integrates, analyses, and institutionalises data governs with discipline.
Within the broader vision of Digital Pakistan, this moment carries structural weight. Digital transformation without integrated statistical architecture produces surface modernity without systemic reform. PBS, as steward of the National Statistical System, must anchor this transition — convening ministries, enforcing standards, aligning classifications, and institutionalising trust across the data ecosystem. Its role is no longer confined to enumeration. It extends to integration, coherence, and utilisation.
If Pakistan commits to disciplined, transparent, and institutionalised data utilisation under a strengthened PBS-led framework, it can convert information into reform, reform into efficiency, and efficiency into tangible improvements in citizens’ lives. The imperative is stark; not more dashboards, not more portals, not more reports, but more use. Because when integrated data informs fiscal choice, service design, and risk mitigation, governance strengthens. And when governance strengthens, schools teach better, clinics function reliably, jobs expand, and communities withstand shock.
Pakistan’s governance problem was never about data. It has always been about whether we choose to use it. And the future of governance, and the lived experience of Pakistan’s citizens, depends on that choice.
This article is written by Shadab Fariduddin, a public policy and institutional reform specialist with over two decades of experience in governance, data systems, and development strategy. He has advised government institutions, multilateral agencies, and private sector leaders on evidence-based decision-making, digital transformation, and systemic reform. He can be reached via LinkedIn.
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