Advancing Pakistan's Digital Public Infrastructure

Digital public infrastructure begins with identity. Every service a citizen uses, every payment they make and every credential they hold rests on the state being able to identify them.

Dr. Sohail Munir, Chairperson, Pakistan Digital Authority, met with Lt. Gen. Muhammad Munir Afsar (Retd.), Chairman, National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), on 27 July 2026 to discuss a coordinated national framework for secure digital identity and to strengthen collaboration on Pakistan's Digital Public Infrastructure.

The discussion focused on trusted data exchange, interoperability, cloud infrastructure and the governance mechanisms that will underpin Pakistan's digital transformation agenda. NADRA shared its national and international experience in designing and implementing digital public infrastructure, including digital identity, civil registration and secure identity management solutions deployed in Pakistan and in Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan and Somalia.

PDA and NADRA identified the following key areas for collaboration:

• Advancing Pakistan's Digital Public Infrastructure through a whole-of-government approach.
• Strengthening digital identity, trust frameworks and interoperable government services.
• Expanding the Shared eKYC ecosystem to support secure digital onboarding, remote biometric verification and financial inclusion.
• Establishing national interoperability and data governance standards for seamless information exchange between public sector institutions.
• Accelerating implementation of the National Cloud Policy and the transition to resilient, cloud-native government infrastructure.
• Developing a centralized national data integration framework to improve efficiency, optimize public resources and strengthen cybersecurity.
• Formalizing the Digital Public Infrastructure Council to provide strategic oversight, institutional coordination and governance of Pakistan's national digital transformation initiatives.

Both organizations reaffirmed their commitment to developing trusted digital identity services, interoperable platforms, national technical standards and secure digital governance frameworks, in continued implementation of the Digital Nation Pakistan Act, 2025.

Identity is where digital public infrastructure starts. Getting it right, and working on it together, is what allows everything built above it to be trusted.