PESHAWAR: Pakistan Citizen Portal, an integrated system for recording and redressing citizens’ complaints against the performance of government departments, has made headlines after it was included in the best citizen service delivery competition at the World Government Summit (WGS) in Dubai this year. 

“The app is among the top three and we hope to win the first position. It will be an honor for the country,” Kamran Bangash, special assistant to the Chief Minister KP on Information Technology, told Arab News on Sunday.

Dr. Muhammad Akif Khan, Deputy Coordinator e-Governance at Performance Management and Reforms Unit (PMRU), Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), who is representing Pakistan at the WGS along with his peer Adil Raza, will present the application at the summit.

The app was first introduced in 2015 at provincial level in KP where it managed to elicit a great response in the previous Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) government. “After becoming the country’s prime minister, Imran Khan wanted to scale up the app to provide services on national level. He tasked the same team from KP to introduce it on the federal level,” said Bangash.

After the portal was introduced at the national level, hundreds of thousands of complainants used the service to record their grievances. “More than 50 percent complaints have been resolved while many complaints are pending in the concerned departments,” he added.

The response was so good that the app got selected by the government of UAE, said Bangash.

He further said that the success of the app would improve Pakistan’s image. “The success of the app shows that the government is serious in providing facilities to all citizens. It also shows that the government is using modern technology to interact with the public,” he added.