Chairman National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), Muhammad Tariq Malik has said that the authority has embraced massive digital transformation through procedural and structural reforms during the past year. According to him, the institution has completed 27 initiatives out of 43 to digitalize and improve its service delivery during the previous year. The authority also set up a public engagement program and held open courts to resolve grievances of the people. According to him, the NADRA has made its employment procedure online to ensure transparency and merit. The authority, by recruiting an additional number of women, reduced the gender gap among its employees from 4.3 to 1.9 percent, and there were over 100 NADRA centers with a female in charge. Chairman NADRA was of the view that the country should focus on adopting universal database coverage to cover all its population under a unified national database.
The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) is a highly organized, and state-of-the-art institution in the country, which gained excels in the registration of the citizens and issuance of Identity and travel documents of the people besides facilitating the digitization and centralization of the national economy, population census, electoral process, banking and taxation systems, crime investigations along with enhancement of the performance of several government departments and private institutions. However, the process of self-accountability and improvement remains continues and is of utmost importance for a kinetic organization like NADRA to assimilate new innovations into itself. Although, NADRA Chief claimed to have a transparent recruitment mechanism still there are complaints of nepotism in the Sindh and Balochistan regions, while few NADRA employees in these regions are involved in bribes and the issuance of Pakistan Identity cards to foreign nationals including Afghan refugees, illegal migrants from India which causes a grave threat to national security.
Although gender equality has its importance but such cosmetic measures have no worth in operational efficiency. There is a dire need that NADRA protects its data from illegal theft, and hacking, and bring more transparency in its recruitment process along with strict vetting of its employees through security agencies to weed out undesirable individuals from this reputed institution. Hopefully, the NADRA will continue its leading role in National integration in the future.
