Blog Archives

Latest Posts

Monthly

Categories

All Posts in #digitalgovernance

April 30, 2025 - Comments Off on NADRA app enables online registration of births, deaths, marriages

NADRA app enables online registration of births, deaths, marriages

The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has launched a new mobile application allowing citizens to register life events such as births, deaths, and changes in marital status remotely from their homes.

The app was launched during the second meeting of the National Registration and Biometric Policy Framework Implementation Committee, attended by federal and provincial officials. Initially being rolled out in Punjab, the application is supported by extended biometric verification services at union councils. According to NADRA Chairman Lt Gen (Retd) Muhammad Munir Afsar, the initiative marks a significant step toward improving service delivery and maintaining a more accurate population database. 

NADRA also announced the establishment of one-window counters in Islamabad to streamline citizen access to civil registration services. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) chairman also updated the committee on the finalisation of the National Biometric Policy, signalling further integration of biometric systems in public service delivery.

February 11, 2025 - Comments Off on Govt’s Ignite National Tech Fund website hacked, quickly restored.

Govt’s Ignite National Tech Fund website hacked, quickly restored.

The website of the Ignite National Tech Fund, a government-backed startup incubator, was hacked on Monday evening, raising serious concerns about the government and the security of its websites and other platforms. The hacking of the website resulted in the website being inaccessible – or accessible with great difficulty – for several hours, with animated cartoons being used to break into the website. Ignite officials claimed that not only had the website been restored, however, but that security measures had been fortified in response.

What Ignite and other government officials were not able to publicly discuss, however, were the identity of the parties responsible for the hack, or what weaknesses in the system had been exploited. Whether this was due to an in-depth investigation yet to be undertaken, or other reasons pertaining to security, has yet to be seen.

February 10, 2025 - Comments Off on Pakistan committed to digital transparency, accountability and Ethical AI: IT Minister

Pakistan committed to digital transparency, accountability and Ethical AI: IT Minister

Pakistan’s IT Minister discussed the importance of closing the “digital divide” by promoting and engaging in “inclusive policies and capacity-building initiatives”, as well as the importance of “data privacy, security, and fairness in artificial intelligence (AI) systems”, in a report by Dawn.

Speaking at the Leap 2025 technology conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan’s Minister for Information Technology and Telecom, Shaza Fatima Khawaja, discussed what she saw as the “transformative impact of AI”, and pushed for “strong regulatory frameworks to ensure AI benefits all segments of society”. The Minister also called for that a global framework that ensured that any wide-scale rolling out of AI was done so with ethical standards to be incorporated and enforced – something that she said was a goal behind Pakistan’s own ongoing development of an AI policy.

The need to ensure that any usage of AI had a low carbon footprint was also raised - a matter of controversy, as one criticism among many regarding AI has been the drastic consumption of water and other energy resources by companies such as OpenAI in regards to AI.

December 24, 2024 - Comments Off on Bilawal advocate “bill of rights” for digital age

Bilawal advocate “bill of rights” for digital age

It is time to draft a “digital bill of rights”, said PPP leader Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, in an attempt to create further space between him and the government regarding the latter’s controversial direction regarding VPNs and internet disruptions in recent months.

Though he agreed that security measures should be taken to tackle disinformation and misinformation, Bhutto-Zardari said that “babus and politicians sitting in Islamabad do not understand” the internet, and that the government was seeking to control people “in the shape [of controlling] bandwidth, optical fibre and wireless internet.”

Calling upon young people to contribute to and develop a draft “bill of rights”,  Bhutto-Zardari said that he would table the draft in the National Assembly once the draft had been prepared through a consultative process.

“I will believe access to the internet should be declared a fundamental right, like [the right to a clean] environment was declared a fundamental right in the 26th amendment. Affordable, equitable access to high speed internet should be a fundamental right,” said  Bhutto-Zardari.