PM Orders Digitisation of All Federal Government Property Records in Pakistan

Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif has directed the acceleration of the digitisation process across government institutions, including the digitalisation of records of all federal public properties at the earliest, according to a press release issued by the PM Office Media Wing on 17 August 2026. The directive came during a review meeting on ongoing reforms at the National Information Technology Board and the progress of the Islamabad Technology Park's construction.

What the Prime Minister Directed

Chairing the meeting, the prime minister said that facilitating citizens in accessing public services remains a government priority, and directed that all government digital platforms be made more effective in line with contemporary needs. He instructed the National Information Technology Board, commonly known as NITB, to focus specifically on providing citizens with easy, efficient and modern digital services, and emphasised that all relevant institutions must work in a coordinated manner to ensure timely, transparent and accessible digital services. The prime minister described the transition of federal ministries to e office systems as one of the most significant reforms to date, and directed that its use be extended across all subordinate departments and state owned enterprises. Within this broader digitisation push, he specifically asked for the digitalisation of records of all public properties at the earliest.

Who Attended the Meeting

According to the PM Office's press release, the review meeting was attended by Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Establishment Division Ahad Khan Cheema, Federal Minister Dr Musadik Masood Malik, Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja, and senior officials from relevant institutions.

Where NITB's Reforms Currently Stand

Officials briefed the meeting that NITB had undergone right sizing, with key appointments made transparently, and confirmed that all federal ministries had already been shifted to the e office system, with work continuing to expand its use across other departments and state owned entities. The National Information Technology Board itself was established in 2014 following the merger of the Pakistan Computer Bureau and the Electronic Government Directorate, and its status was changed to that of an autonomous body under the National Information Technology Board Act of 2022, approved by the President of Pakistan. NITB operates under the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, with a stated mission of transforming government departments into digitally empowered organisations and providing enterprise resource planning, IT consultancy and cybersecurity support to federal ministries and divisions.

The Islamabad Technology Park Decision

The same meeting reviewed progress on construction of the Islamabad Technology Park. The prime minister expressed displeasure over delays in completing the project, and directed that construction be expedited so the facility can become operational on a priority basis. He further directed that, once complete, management of the Technology Park be fully outsourced rather than run directly by a government department.

This is not the first time the project's delays have drawn direct attention from the top of government. The Technology Park sits on 14.9 acres in Chak Shahzad and was designed to house around 6,000 IT professionals, funded substantially through a 78 million dollar concessional loan secured from South Korea in 2017. An official audit report examined by Dawn termed the project an unfinished dream, documenting lapses in execution, non utilisation of foreign loan funds, cost escalation to roughly Rs13.72 billion, and delays traced in part to the prolonged process of securing mandatory approvals from CDA and the Pakistan Environment Protection Agency. The project has already missed multiple earlier deadlines, and a National Assembly Standing Committee briefing disclosed that nine different project managers had been changed within just over a year, a level of management turnover that officials themselves cited as a direct contributor to the delay.

Why the Property Digitisation Directive Matters

A directive to digitise records of all federal public properties, if implemented, would touch a significant category of real estate that has historically been recorded and managed through fragmented, paper based systems spread across different ministries, departments and state owned enterprises. Centralising and digitising this data could make it considerably easier for the federal government to track its own property holdings, identify underused or vacant public land and buildings, and reduce the kind of record keeping gaps that have previously complicated disputes over government owned property in Pakistan. This directive was issued as part of a broader digital governance push rather than as a standalone real estate policy, and no specific implementation timeline, responsible agency for the property digitisation component, or public facing registry was announced alongside it.

This directive echoes a broader regional pattern of governments moving to centralise and digitise their own property holdings. The UAE, for instance, recently launched its own Federal Government Real Estate Assets Platform, a unified electronic registry mandated by federal law to document, classify and link all federally owned real estate with financial and operational systems across government, offering one model of what a similar Pakistani system could eventually resemble if this directive is fully implemented.

What Remains Unclear

As of this report, no separate notification, project timeline or agency mandate specific to the public property digitisation directive had been made public. The directive was issued verbally during a review meeting and reported through the PM Office's own press release, meaning the practical mechanics, which properties are covered, which ministry will execute the digitisation, and what if any public access the resulting records will offer, remain to be defined. Readers should treat this as a policy direction rather than an operational system already in place, a caution reinforced by the Technology Park's own documented history of missed timelines within the very same digital governance portfolio.

What This Means for Property Related Institutions

Ministries, departments and state owned enterprises holding federal property should expect to be asked to contribute records to whatever digitisation exercise follows from this directive, and should treat the NITB led e office transition already under way across federal ministries as the likely technical backbone for that effort. For the wider public, this directive signals a stated intent to improve the transparency and management of federally owned real estate, though it does not itself create a new public registry or verification tool that citizens or investors could use to check private property status, since it is scoped specifically to the government's own property holdings. This differs from citizen facing verification tools already operating in Pakistan's provinces, such as the PLRA Housing Societies Management System in Punjab, which lets buyers check a private housing society's legal status directly, a genuinely different function from a federal government asset registry aimed at internal record keeping.

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Sources

1. Radio Pakistan, official government broadcaster, "PM calls for faster digitalization of govt institutions", 17 Aug 2026: https://www.radio.gov.pk/17-08-2026/pm-calls-for-faster-digitalization-of-govt-institutions
2. National Information Technology Board, official website: https://nitb.gov.pk/
3. Wikipedia, National Information Technology Board, background on formation, legal status and mandate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Information_Technology_Board
4. Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, official website: https://moitt.gov.pk/
5. Dawn, audit report coverage documenting the Islamabad Technology Park's execution history, cost escalation and delays: https://www.dawn.com/news/1928364
6. Gulf News, "UAE launches digital platform to centralise federal real estate assets": https://gulfnews.com/business/property/uae-launches-digital-platform-to-centralise-federal-real-estate-assets-1.500405845