Nishan E Pakistan (NP), “a unified digital platform designed to modernize and standardize identity verification services,” has been publicly introduced by the National Database and Registration Authority of Pakistan (NADRA) throughout the nation’s digital economy.
A previously disjointed and primarily manual system will be replaced with NP, a web-based gateway that will allow government agencies and other approved private sector businesses to quickly onboard their services and confirm identities, according to a NADRA release.
Prior to the implementation of the single gateway, government agencies and institutions had to deal with “lengthy documentation, repetitive approvals, and siloed access mechanisms” in order to onboard services, which frequently resulted in expensive delays.
The ID authority confirmed that the introduction of NP is consistent with its mission and resolve to expedite ID verification services and support the expansion of Pakistan’s digital economy.
In line with the nation’s Digital Economy Enhancement Program, Nishan Pakistan is anticipated to greatly ease identity verification, particularly for government agencies in charge of social assistance programs and those providing other crucial public services that call for identity verification. According to the Daily Times, the nation wants its digital economy to account for 10–15% of its GDP by 2030.
Onboarded institutions and organizations can “securely access multi-biometric verification APIs (Fingerprint and Facial Recognition), Verisys (Demographic and identity verification services), Proof-of-Life API, and Single Sign-On (SSO) for secure system access” via the recently launched platform, according to NADRA.
According to NADRA’s regulatory framework, these organizations will be able to “verify customer identity information efficiently while ensuring purpose limitation, proportionality, and data minimization” with the help of the system.
In an effort to improve the security of identity verification procedures and fortify the nation’s digital identification infrastructure, NADRA issued a bug bounty challenge last month.
The National Cyber Emergency Response Team and the Higher Education Commission collaborated on the challenge’s concept, which includes several of the nation’s universities.
In an effort to improve digital ID security, NADRA updated the Pak ID app last year to incorporate biometric login even before the bug bounty challenge.
