The Pakistan Digital Authority has outlined how the country’s digital public infrastructure is being built layer by layer, with trust, identity and payments forming what it described as the ground floor of the national digital stack. According to PDA, each layer of this stack depends on the one beneath it, and having established that foundational base, the Authority said the next stage of the work is both harder and more interesting, focused on getting institutions to share the information they already hold and putting that shared knowledge to work for citizens standing at the other end of the counter.
Central to this next stage is WASL, Pakistan’s National Data Exchange Layer, which PDA described as the mechanism through which secure, real time data sharing happens across government departments. Through WASL, one department can verify a record held by another institution without requiring the citizen to carry physical documents from one office to another, removing a step that has traditionally placed the burden of proving eligibility or identity on the person seeking a service rather than on the institutions holding the relevant records. This shift is central to how PDA is framing the next phase of Pakistan’s digital transformation, moving the administrative burden away from citizens and onto the systems meant to serve them.
PDA was specific about how WASL handles the data that passes through it, stating that the system does not store the information it carries. Each institution retains ownership of its own records, and only the specific data a service actually needs moves between systems, and only at the moment it is required. This design distinguishes WASL from a centralized database model, instead functioning as a connective layer that allows verified information to flow between institutions on demand while leaving custodianship of the underlying records with the originating department. PDA framed this approach as the mechanism by which paperwork stops being the citizen’s responsibility, shifting that burden onto the institutions themselves, while keeping each department accountable for the accuracy and security of its own data.
Above this data exchange layer, PDA positioned artificial intelligence as sitting at the top of the stack, where it is intended to help government decisions become faster and better informed. This layered framing, moving from trust and identity through payments, then data exchange via WASL, and finally to AI supported decision making, reflects PDA’s broader approach to sequencing its digital infrastructure work, building each capability on top of the foundations already established rather than pursuing these components in isolation. The Authority described this progression simply as the build, layer by layer, suggesting a deliberate developmental structure to how Pakistan’s digital public infrastructure has been designed over time, with each additional capability intended to depend on and extend those that came before it, rather than being introduced as a standalone or disconnected initiative.
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