ISLAMABAD: The Benazir Income Support Programme’s (BISP) updated National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER) will prove to be a cornerstone for the future policy making as it will ensure coverage of widows, orphans, elderly and the disabled making Pakistan a model welfare country in the world. The digital mapping of the data would be an asset for launching targeted subsidies on agriculture, electricity, education, health, nutrition and disaster targeted support to the poor said Federal Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal while inaugurating the NSER Data Analytics mechanism at BISP Headquarters. The meeting was attended by BISP Chairwoman Marvi Memon, BISP Secretary Yasmeen Masood, Member Social Sector Planning Division Asma Hyder and Chief Economist Dr Nadeem Javaid. Speaking on the occasion, Marvi said the BISP is all set to register the first ever dynamic NSER of the country as the previous NSER was a static registry unable to cater to changing socio economic conditions of the population. The technology enabled ongoing survey for NSER update will generate best NSER in the world, making Pakistan clinch the top position, whereas currently Pakistan ranks at number five in terms of targeting and selection. Briefing on the NSER update through resurvey, DG BISP Dr Tahir Noor stated that ongoing door to door survey in 16 pilot districts would be completed by July 2017. It would be followed by national roll out in September 2017 that would be completed by March 2018. He apprised that BISP has also successfully tested the Desk registration in Naseerabad, Sukkur, Haripur and Bahawalpur which has shown tremendous results. The minister was given a detailed presentation on various features of the technology centric data collection mechanisms developed in-house by BISP (Management Information System) MIS team. BISP Principal Technology Advisor Ahmad Farooq apprised the Minister that to register the number one NSER in the world, Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) approach has been adopted instead of Paper Assisted Personal Interviewing (PAPI). The registration application has in-built checks and controls capable of identifying errors. Bluetooth-based synchronisation of the enumerators and supervisors, is a quality control feature that will ensure error free registration. In order to ensure complete coverage of the population, computer based enlisting with the help of Google maps is also being utilised. The performance and coverage quality of survey teams is monitored from headquarters through a Visual Monitoring Coverage Assurance (VMCA) system. The addition of new questions in questionnaire related to rural/urban distribution, agro climatic zones, transgender, chronic diseases, mental disabilities, access to justice, vocational training will enhance the quality of data. Iqbal praised the dashboard for monitoring of survey activities and said that synergizing through technology will be game changer for targeted interventions.