Kashoon Leeza spoke with Dr. Sohail Munir, Chairperson of Pakistan Digital Authority, on Conversations at Foothills by ISSRA, Institute for Strategic Studies, Research and Analysis, in a discussion centered on digital sovereignty and Pakistan’s future in the age of artificial intelligence. The conversation covered Pakistan Digital Authority’s role as an enabler within the government, its mandate to ensure a positive citizen experience, and its work in setting standards and ensuring compliance across digital initiatives.
During the discussion, Dr. Sohail clarified that digital transformation is not simply a digital upgrade of existing devices or systems, but a whole of government approach that changes how institutions operate, deliver services and make decisions at a structural level. This framing positioned digital transformation as a shift in institutional behaviour and decision making processes, rather than a narrower technical exercise limited to modernising equipment or software used by government departments.
The conversation then moved to what Dr. Sohail described as the defining question of the decade, namely artificial intelligence and what it means for a country to rely on AI models trained in the United States or China. He noted that an AI model absorbs the norms of wherever it was trained, meaning that when a citizen turns to AI for advice, whose biases the system has been trained on becomes a matter of national consequence. Dr. Sohail described this concept as inference sovereignty, positioning it alongside data sovereignty as something a state must actively decide about rather than something it simply inherits by default through the AI systems it adopts.
The discussion also touched on what Digital Pakistan could look like by 2030, with Dr. Sohail framing his answer from the perspective of the citizen. He described a future built around government registries that people trust, services that anticipate citizen needs rather than waiting to be asked, a safe and inclusive digital environment, and an economy in which digital opportunity reaches everyone rather than remaining concentrated among a limited segment of the population. Taken together, the conversation set out a broader vision for Pakistan’s digital future alongside the ongoing work being undertaken to reach that vision, with Pakistan Digital Authority positioning itself as a central actor in shaping how the country approaches both digital transformation and the emerging questions surrounding AI sovereignty in the years ahead.
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