Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: On the occasion of World Poverty Day, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection, Senator Dr. Sania Nishtar Saturday launched ‘National Data Exchange Platform’ (NDEP) for the Ehsaas’ National Socioeconomic Registry 2021which is one of the six main pillars of One Window Ehsaas.

With the Ehsaas National Socioeconomic Registry 2021 survey stands almost complete, NDEP will facilitate data sharing and data access services for all executing agencies stewarded by Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division (PASSD). Later, this service will also be extended to provinces and other government agencies implementing Ehsaas programs as well.  Speaking to press media about the launch of NDEP, Dr. Sania said, “Ehsaas NDEP will be a game-changer in transforming social protection and poverty reduction programs in the country.

In the past, there was no way of one government agency knowing what support an individual or a family was getting from another government agency. Some families with connections and influence were getting multiple benefits and other more deserving ones were getting none.” She further reinforced, “But now with Ehsaas NDEP in place, the executing agencies in the ecosystem of Ehsaas will be able to see what benefits an individual or a household is getting by simply punching in the computerized national identity number of an individual.

More importantly, the benefits which each family and individual is receiving from each organization will also be visible to all agencies across Ehsaas programs.”  Dr. Sania also congratulated the teams working on the national socio-economic survey and technology.  This data integration of the Ehsaas survey will also facilitate the adoption of the Ehsaas One Window targeting Policy that the Prime Minister approved in the last quarter.

It will ultimately save program cost, reduce redundancy, optimize beneficiary targeting, and will also enable efficient and effective policy decisions, planning, and implementation. Data sharing will be safeguarded through the Cognitive API Architecture approach. There will be two-way data sharing; agencies with whom data will be shared will also be required to update the registry with their own information. The NDEP will also be connected to the databases of other federal agencies enabling real-time beneficiary information validation, such as NADRA, Utility Stores Corporation, and Mobile Point of Sale system of National Bank.

Hence, the same data exchange platform will underpin the rollout of the forthcoming Ehsaas targeted commodity subsidies program in collaboration with Utility Stores Corporation and the National Bank of Pakistan. Through this national-scale data sharing platform, the executing agencies of Ehsaas will be able to access data from the unified registry in real-time to validate beneficiary information.