The federal government has decided to carry out a comprehensive restructuring of the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, transforming it from an institution designed around a telecommunications-focused policy environment into a modern digital governance body capable of leading Pakistan’s digital economy over the next decade, with the exercise to be funded and supported under the World Bank-backed Digital Economy Enhancement Project.
Official documents indicate that the ministry’s current organisational structure is no longer fully suited to rapidly changing global digital trends, having been built primarily to regulate and manage the telecommunications sector rather than to navigate the breadth of emerging digital policy areas that now fall within its remit. The restructuring will prepare the ministry to take an active leadership role across Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, data governance, cloud computing, digital regulation, innovation ecosystems, and cross-government digital transformation, areas where the pace of change and the complexity of policy decisions have outgrown the ministry’s existing administrative architecture.
To carry out the exercise, the government will hire an international consulting firm to conduct a comprehensive institutional assessment, identifying structural and operational gaps and recommending a future-oriented governance framework tailored to Pakistan’s digital transformation goals and the government’s broader economic agenda under Uraan Pakistan. The consultancy will also review coordination mechanisms and the current distribution of responsibilities across key institutions operating under or alongside the ministry, including PTA, NADRA, NITB, Ignite, PSEB, the Universal Service Fund, the Special Technology Zones Authority, and provincial information technology boards, where overlapping mandates and fragmented accountability have at times created coordination challenges. The consulting firm will benchmark the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication against leading digital governance ministries internationally and recommend amendments to the Rules of Business 1973 where required to give the restructured ministry the legal mandate and authority it needs.
The full restructuring plan will include a detailed organisational framework, a revised staffing structure, updated job descriptions, human resource reforms, and a phased implementation roadmap covering the next ten years, with short, medium, and long-term measures alongside budget requirements, risk management strategies, and the regulatory approvals needed from relevant federal authorities. The consultancy assignment is expected to be completed within six months of the contract award, with a steering committee led by the Secretary of IT and including representatives from the Establishment Division, Finance Division, Planning Commission, and other stakeholders overseeing the process and providing strategic direction throughout. The Digital Economy Enhancement Project, within which the restructuring exercise sits, is also supporting the development of digital authentication systems, responsible data exchange infrastructure, a national online public services portal, the Pakistan Business Portal, and the digitisation of regulatory approvals across government, collectively representing a broad-based effort to modernise Pakistan’s digital governance architecture from the institutional level down to the citizen-facing service layer.
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