LocationsFrom Registration to Trust: What NADRA Became, and What It Could Become
September 9, 2026
I recently found myself sitting across from the Chairman of NADRA, going through something like 50 slides.
Fifty slides can be a dangerous proposition.
Usually, by slide 20, you are discreetly checking the time. By slide 35, you are wondering whether anyone will notice if you leave. By slide 50, you are thinking seriously about the possibility of a fire drill.
This time was different. I was fascinated.
The occasion was itself telling. I was there as part of a South-South Cooperation initiative between Pakistan and Somalia, facilitated by UNDP. Around fifteen members of a Somali delegation were in the room, there to learn from Pakistan's experience.
And suddenly, the story of NADRA was no longer just about Pakistan. It was about what one developing country can build that another developing country finds worth learning from.
Twenty-five years ago
NADRA was established in 2000. At the time, the idea of creating a comprehensive, computerised national identity system at this scale was ambitious. The institution was tasked with moving Pakistan from manual registration towards a modern, integrated system capable of supporting better governance and public service delivery.
UNDP works with NADRA to increase women’s voter registration and reduce barriers to their participation in elections.
Twenty-five years later, the scale is difficult to absorb. NADRA sits behind one of the world's largest national biometric identity ecosystems, with more than 200 million people registered, a nationwide registration network and an increasingly digital set of services. It has moved from cards and registration centres towards biometric verification, Digital ID and wider digital public infrastructure.
The journey from the computerised identity card of 2000 to an identity that can increasingly live on your phone is quite remarkable. But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is not what NADRA has built. It is what that infrastructure makes possible.
From “Who are you?” to “What can we do for you?”
For much of NADRA's history, the fundamental question has been: Who are you?
That sounds simple. It isn't.
A functioning state needs to know who its citizens are. People need to be able to establish their identity. Institutions need to know that the person standing in front of them is the person they claim to be.
But once a country has solved that problem at scale, another question inevitably follows: What can we do with that trusted identity?
Imagine a family affected by a flood. Instead of asking them to prove their identity, their household, their location and their eligibility to every government department separately, could the state use trusted identity infrastructure to establish those facts once, securely and with appropriate consent, and then get assistance to them?
Imagine a woman accessing social protection. A young person applying for a service. An entrepreneur opening a business. An older person accessing a pension.
And this is where identity becomes more than a government database. It becomes the connective tissue between institutions, allowing government, financial institutions, telecommunications companies, healthcare providers to verify identity and exchange information securely, rather than repeatedly asking citizens to navigate each system separately.
The promise of mature digital identity is not more forms, more passwords and more bureaucracy.
It is fewer. And that is when identity stops being merely an administrative document and starts becoming development infrastructure.
In 2023, UNDP supported the Election Commission and NADRA in providing identity cards to people in flood-affected areas to help exercise their right to vote.
If NADRA were created today
This was one of the thoughts I had when listening to the Chairman.
If we were creating NADRA today, would we still call it the National Database and Registration Authority?
I am not sure.
NADRA has outgrown the words that originally defined it. The name tells us where the institution came from. It does not quite capture where it could go.
I would keep NADRA. After 25 years, the name itself has become an asset, recognised in Pakistan and beyond. But perhaps the evolution is better captured by a simple shift: from registration to trust.
NADRA: National Digital Identity and Trust Authority.
I know there is an obvious problem with that sentence. The R does not magically become a T.
And perhaps that is precisely the point. Not as a literal rebranding exercise. Not as an attempt to force the letters to fit. Rather, as a recognition of how far the institution has travelled.
Not because registration and databases are no longer important. They remain the foundation. But because trust may ultimately be NADRA's most valuable product.
Registration is an activity. Identity is an asset. Trust is infrastructure.
Trust that an identity is real. Trust that a person is who they say they are. Trust between institutions that need to exchange information. And increasingly, trust between citizens and the state.
The more NADRA becomes embedded in Pakistan's digital infrastructure, the more important that trust becomes.
Pakistan has something to export
The Somali delegation sitting in that room made this particularly tangible.
Pakistan is not normally the first country people mention when they talk about countries exporting digital government expertise. But perhaps it should be.
NADRA now provides digital identity and governance solutions internationally, including in countries such as Somalia, Kenya, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Fiji.
The Somalia example is especially interesting. Somalia's national ID journey is still relatively young, and UNDP has described national ID as an important part of state-building and the emerging social contract between citizens and the state. Pakistan's NADRA has been among the partners sharing experience and technical know-how.
This is what makes South-South Cooperation so compelling. It is not simply about transferring technology from a rich country to a poorer one. Many times the most useful lesson comes from a country that has faced similar development challenges and figured out a way through them.
There is something quite satisfying about a group of Somali officials sitting in Islamabad to learn how Pakistan built something they now want to build for Somalia.
A delegation from Somalia's National Identification and Registration Authority visiting NADRA Headquarters in Islamabad.
Development is not always knowledge flowing North – South. Sometimes it flows South – South. And sometimes it flows in unexpected directions.
Perhaps this is also why I found myself thinking about Vietnam during the conversation. Vietnam, too, is building national digital identity and population-data infrastructure as part of a much broader digital transformation. Different institutional journeys, similar destination: making the state easier for citizens to navigate.
That, ultimately, is what makes these systems interesting to a development person. The technology is fascinating. But the real prize is not technology. It is what technology changes people's lives.
What keeps the Chairman awake at night
There was one moment in our conversation that stayed with me more than any of the 50 slides.
The Chairman told us that cybersecurity is what keeps him awake at night.
I found that revealing.
Why? Because it captures the paradox of NADRA's future. The more valuable the infrastructure becomes, the greater the responsibility to protect it.
NADRA Chairman Lt. General Muhammad Munir Afsar presenting a souvenir to UNDP Pakistan Deputy Resident Representative Ms. Van Nguyen at NADRA Headquarters in Islamabad.
NADRA does not simply hold information. It holds something much more fundamental: the digital representation of people's identities. And as identity becomes more interconnected across institutions, the consequences of getting it wrong, or allowing it to be compromised, become much greater.
The institution created to solve the problem of “Who are you?” is therefore confronting a much harder question: “How do we make sure that everyone can continue to trust the answer?”
That is why the next chapter of NADRA cannot only be about better technology. It has to be about cybersecurity, privacy, consent, governance and public trust.
The Chairman's sleepless nights may therefore tell us something important about the future of digital government: the more powerful identity becomes, the more carefully it has to be protected.
The NADRA of the future may be almost invisible
There is an irony here. The better NADRA becomes, the less people may need to see NADRA.
Today, we associate it with offices, counters, photographs, fingerprints, cards and queues.
Tomorrow, the most successful version of NADRA might be almost invisible.
You prove yourself once, securely and with consent. Government systems recognise you. Your eligibility is established. Services connect. Assistance reaches you faster. You spend less time navigating the machinery of the state.
If that happens, NADRA will have moved from being the institution that registers citizens to the infrastructure that helps the state recognise, trust and serve them.
And perhaps that is the real evolution of the institution.
Not from analogue to digital. Not from cards to phones. But from registration to trust.
Twenty-five years ago, NADRA began with a database. Twenty-five years later, it has become something much harder to define, and potentially much more important: an identity institution, a technology institution, a governance institution, and increasingly, an institution whose experience other countries want to learn from.
Which brings me back to that room in Islamabad: nearly 50 slides, a Chairman with seemingly endless stories about the institution, and around fifteen Somali colleagues trying to absorb twenty-five years of Pakistani experience.
Perhaps the best measure of what NADRA has achieved is not the number of records in its database. It is the fact that another country is sitting in the room asking: “How did you do this?”
And perhaps that is the question NADRA's next twenty-five years should answer: What becomes possible for Pakistan, and for others, because people can be trusted, recognised and connected to the state?
That is a much bigger question.
And perhaps, after 25 years, that is where NADRA's next chapter begins.