Pakistan to Conduct First-Ever IT Census in 2026
Muhammad Naeem:
Islamabad: Pakistan has officially announced its first-ever nationwide IT census, scheduled for 2026 — a landmark step aimed at collecting reliable and comprehensive data on the country’s rapidly growing technology workforce.
For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the government plans to gather detailed information about the size of the IT sector, workforce distribution, technical skills, freelancing activity, and regional representation across the country.
The announcement has been welcomed by many in the technology community, but it has also sparked debate over why such a foundational exercise is only being conducted now, despite Pakistan branding itself as an emerging global tech hub for more than a decade.
Over the years, Pakistan has unveiled ambitious IT export targets worth billions of dollars, organized AI and digital innovation summits, and signed partnerships with international technology giants including Google and DFINITY. However, industry observers point out that many of these policy decisions were made without accurate or official data about the country’s actual IT workforce.
Critics argue that Pakistan’s digital economy strategy has largely been shaped in the absence of verified information regarding how many people are employed in the sector, what skills they possess, and where they are located.
“We were building a skyscraper without knowing how many floors it had,” one industry analyst remarked while discussing the announcement.
Questions have also been raised regarding the execution of the census itself. According to available details, only around 180 to 200 enumerators are expected to conduct the nationwide survey in a country that reportedly has more than 2.37 million active freelancers spread across urban centers, remote towns, and rural regions.
Technology experts warn that the usefulness of the census will ultimately depend on the quality and accuracy of the data collection process.
Concerns have intensified due to criticism surrounding Pakistan’s 2023 population census, where several analysts and political stakeholders argued that rural populations and socioeconomic disparities were not fully represented.
Industry leaders believe that if conducted properly, the IT census could become a turning point for Pakistan’s digital economy by helping policymakers make informed decisions related to taxation, freelancer regulations, IT education, internet infrastructure, startup incentives, and export planning.
However, many also stress that incomplete or inaccurate data could result in another missed opportunity for evidence-based policymaking in one of the country’s fastest-growing economic sectors.
As Pakistan prepares for its first comprehensive digital workforce mapping exercise, the technology community is now watching closely to see whether the initiative becomes a genuine policy tool — or merely another headline.
