There is a sentence every Pakistani knows too well: “System down hai.” It echoes from Karachi to Khyber with the same resigned shrug, the same helpless tone, and the same acceptance that the country’s most essential state institution is, once again, not functioning. What should have been Pakistan’s most reliable digital backbone has instead become its most predictable point of collapse. Across the world, identity authorities operate with near-perfect uptime. In Pakistan, the national identity system goes offline with the regularity of a power cut. And when NADRA goes down, the country follows.
In January 2023, a NADRA server failure triggered a nationwide biometric outage that paralysed the banking sector. Customers stood helplessly at ATMs and service counters as banks announced they could not verify identities because NADRA’s database had crashed. Financial transactions froze not due to a cyberattack, but a routine institutional breakdown.
Months later, airport immigration stalled as verification systems failed mid-operation. Passengers missed flights, terminals backed up, and officers waited for the network to “come back online,” the digital version of hoping the generator would kick in. That same year, telecom companies issued national alerts suspending SIM issuance because NADRA’s biometric system was down yet again.
These headline failures mirror the daily frustrations of ordinary citizens. NADRA’s much-promoted online app rarely works, crashing during document uploads, rejecting biometric scans, or freezing before payment. Users attempt the same action repeatedly only to be signed out or forced to start over. A platform designed to eliminate queues in fact pushes millions back into them.
NADRA’s much-advertised rider service, once introduced as a convenience for home delivery, has now been quietly discontinued for the general public. What remains is an “exclusive” or protocol-style service reserved for select applicants, further reinforcing the perception that even identity services in Pakistan run on privilege rather than equal access. Yet even this exclusive offering mirrors the inefficiency of the wider institution. Applicants receive calls after calls with various delivery dates and times, often 10 times or more, with the rider never actually arriving. Citizens reorganise their schedules around promised delivery windows, only to be informed at the last minute that the visit has been “rescheduled.” A service meant to offer relief instead multiplies frustration.
Pakistan cannot speak of e-governance or digital transformation when the very institution responsible for proving one’s identity collapses daily.
Inside NADRA centres, the collapse becomes even more apparent. Staff arrive late or are not present at all. Token systems are a performance of disorder, vulnerable to manipulation. Applicants are told to wait indefinitely, return the next day, or produce new documents that were never mentioned before. “Facilitation fees”, still the euphemism for bribes, remain an open secret. And unless someone influential intervenes, files languish untouched for weeks.
The failure is not merely operational; it is structural. NADRA sits under the Ministry of Interior, which views it primarily through a security lens rather than as a digital service provider. Meanwhile, the Ministry of IT, which actually has the expertise to modernise national systems, has no formal authority over NADRA. This bureaucratic misalignment traps Pakistan’s most critical digital infrastructure inside a ministry unequipped to reform it.
Contrast this with nations that treat digital identity as a national priority. Estonia, Singapore, and the UAE integrate identity systems with IT governance, ensuring redundancy, efficiency, and accountability. Pakistan’s model, by contrast, leaves NADRA isolated, politicised, and technologically stagnant.
The consequences are devastating. A system outage means a daily-wage worker loses income because he must return tomorrow. Women travel long distances with children only to be turned away at the entrance. Students miss scholarship deadlines; overseas Pakistanis miss travel plans; welfare beneficiaries are locked out because their biometric verification fails. Banks and telecoms lose billions during outages. When NADRA collapses, the most vulnerable citizens become invisible.
Yet despite holding the biometric data of 240 million people, NADRA operates with no uptime guarantees, no public performance audits, no transparency reports, and no consequences for repeated national failures. In functioning democracies, such outages would trigger parliamentary inquiries. In Pakistan, they trigger memes.
NADRA needs a structural rebuild, modern servers with real redundancy, cloud-backed verification, 24/7 monitoring, and strict uptime standards. Governance must shift to a joint Interior-IT model where security is preserved, but technology is modernised. Staff must be retrained; processes standardised; token systems digitised; corruption eliminated through automation and transparency. The online app must be rebuilt from the ground up, not patched, and the rider delivery service must adopt real logistics, not automated postponements.
Pakistan cannot speak of e-governance or digital transformation when the very institution responsible for proving one’s identity collapses daily. Until NADRA is rebuilt technologically and institutionally, the country will continue functioning as a place where even citizenship must endure queues, crashes, delays, and apologies.
Identity should empower people. In Pakistan, it humiliates them too often.
The writer is a former State Minister for Education and Professional Training, former Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan, Chairperson of the Prime Minister’s Youth Programme and Director at Media Times.