Sania launches Ehsaas’ data exchange platform

ISLAMABAD:

On the occasion of World Poverty Day, the government’s point-person on poverty alleviation, Sania Nishtar, launched the National Data Exchange Platform (NDEP) for the Ehsaas’ National Socioeconomic Registry 2021.

The registry is one of the six pillars of One Window Ehsaas. With the Ehsaas National Socioeconomic Registry 2021 survey almost complete, the NDEP will facilitate data sharing and data access services for all executing agencies stewarded by the Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division (PASSD).

Later, this service will also be extended to provinces and other government agencies implementing Ehsaas programmes.

“Ehsaas NDEP will be a game-changer in transforming social protection and poverty reduction programmes in the country, SAPM on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection Sania Nishtar said while talking to reporters on the launch of NDEP.

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In the past, she alleged that there was no way of one government agency knowing what support an individual or a family was getting from another government agency. “Some families with connections and influence were getting multiple benefits and other more deserving ones were getting none,” she said.

However, with Ehsaas NDEP in place, Sania said: “The executing agencies in the ecosystem of Ehsaas will be able to see what benefits an individual or a household is getting by simply punching in the computerised national identity number of an individual.”

More importantly, she added the benefits that each family and individual is receiving from each organisation will also be visible to all agencies across Ehsaas programmes.

The PM’s aide also congratulated the teams working on the national socio-economic survey and technology.

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This data integration of the Ehsaas survey will also facilitate the adoption of the Ehsaas One Window targeting policy that Prime Minister Imran Khan approved in the last quarter, according to a statement.
“It will ultimately save programme cost, reduce redundancy, optimize beneficiary targeting, and will also enable efficient and effective policy decisions, planning and implementation,” it read.

Data sharing will be safeguarded through the cognitive API architecture approach. There will be two-way data sharing; agencies with whom data will be shared will also be required to update the registry with their own information.

The NDEP will also be connected to the databases of other federal agencies enabling real-time beneficiary information validation.

Hence, the same data exchange platform will underpin the rollout of the forthcoming Ehsaas targeted commodity subsidies programme in collaboration with the USC and the NBP.

Through this national scale data-sharing platform, the executing agencies of Ehsaas will be able to access data from the unified registry in real-time to validate beneficiary information.