ISLAMABAD – Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday will launch EhsaasDistrict Development portal ‘Data4Pakistan’, a pioneering initiative in thecountry’s history to provide an open and public access to poverty estimatesfor every district along with the development and policy indicators.
“Data4Pakistan, the first initiative of its kind in the country, providesopen and public access to a spatial interactive portal that has povertyestimates for every district in Pakistan, along with over 120 developmentand policy indicators,” the PM Office Media Wing in a press release onMonday said.
The portal currently has six rounds of district poverty and developmentdata, covering the period 2004-2018.
Part of Ehsaas strategy, the Data4Pakistan Portal has been developed incollaboration with the World Bank and will be hosted on the Ehsaas websiteof Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division: pass.gov.pk.
“Ehsaas is about the creation of a ‘welfare state’ by countering elitecapture and leveraging 21st century tools—such as using data and technologyto create precision safety nets and promoting social welfare and povertyalleviation solutions.
The opening of Data4Pakistan portal is another important step of thegovernment to foster evidence-based decision making,” it added.
This portal will be a very valuable resource for federal, provincial anddistrict level policymakers, for decision making.
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Interactive maps allow the user to visualize and compare districts onpoverty and two additional indicators. Mousing over a district providesinformation on the selected indicators as a pop-up message.
The user can also select a subset of provinces or a subset of districts tofocus on, using a simple drop-down list. Custom maps built by the user canbe downloaded and printed.
The innovative portal uses data produced by the Pakistan Bureau ofStatistics, as part of its Social and Living Standards Measurement Surveysas well as the Multiple indicators Custer Surveys produced by theprovincial Bureaus of Statistics.
The indicators currently available in the portal, include a range ofdemographic, health, education and employment statistics as well as accessto key services like water, sanitation, electricity and gas. It alsoprovides a number of gender parity indices at the district level.
An ‘Additional Resources’ section on the website provides information onthe indicators included in the portal and other background material andreports. New material as well as new data and indicators will be addedfrequently.
