Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has directed all federal ministries to complete the digitization of their relevant data within prescribed deadlines and make it available on the national digital platform, as part of the ongoing Digital Nation Pakistan Programme. The directive was issued during a review meeting chaired by the Prime Minister in Islamabad, which was attended by Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, Economic Affairs Minister Ahad Cheema, Commerce Minister Jam Kamal, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, Health Minister Mustafa Kamal, IT Minister Shaza Fatima, and officials from relevant government institutions. Various federal ministries briefed the meeting on their public services, performance, and the current status of data provision to the central data center.
The Prime Minister underlined that a central national data center would play a key role in improving government service delivery, making public facilities more accessible, and supporting economic development by integrating data from government institutions and different sectors into a single, unified platform. He said that bringing useful data from all sectors and departments together in one place would contribute directly to the country’s economic development and improve the quality of decisions made at the policy level. He also noted that digitizing ministries’ performance data and related records was important not only for service delivery but also for curbing corruption and institutional mismanagement, framing transparency and accountability as central benefits of the digitization agenda alongside efficiency gains.
The Prime Minister cited the fuel subsidy scheme as a concrete example of what coordinated data sharing across government departments can achieve in practice, noting that the ability to identify and reach deserving segments of society through the scheme had depended on effective integration of data from multiple institutions working in tandem. He praised the Ministry of National Health Services for its work in coordination with provincial governments to develop a universal medical record at the national level, and welcomed the introduction of Quick Response codes to verify the quality of medicines supplied across the country. Officials briefed the meeting that the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication was coordinating with other ministries on sector-specific digitization, with health and agriculture identified as priority areas given their direct impact on large portions of the population. The Ministry of Law is also being supported to make relevant national laws available on a single platform to support public access and inform future legislation.
The Prime Minister’s directive to complete digitization within stipulated timeframes signals a shift from planning to active accountability within the Digital Nation Pakistan Programme, with ministries now expected to deliver against specific deadlines rather than progress at their own pace. Work is continuing across three key objectives identified under the program: digital government services, a digital economy, and digital public facilitation, covering the full range of interactions between citizens and the state that the government intends to transform through technology. The meeting reflected a broader recognition within the federal government that Pakistan’s digital transformation agenda requires not just infrastructure investment but active coordination across ministries and between federal and provincial governments to ensure that the data feeding into the national digital platform is complete, accurate, and current.
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