LAHORE, April 25: The National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) is all set to start first computerised census of the Punjab government employees from May 3.

“Though the authority was given a go-ahead from the provincial government last October in this regard but owing to bureaucratic snags the project could not be kicked off,” an official of the authority told Dawn on Wednesday.

In the first phase, the pilot project would be carried out in Faisalabad district, he said, adding that it would be completed within four months. In the second phase, it would be launched in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Sargodha, Lodhran, Multan, Khanewal, Kasur, Bahawalpur and Gujranwala districts, simultaneously, while in the last phase, for which the date was yet to be fixed, the census in the remaining districts would be conducted, he said. It is an ADB-funded project.

To collect the required data, the official said that Nadra would install semi-mobile units in the offices and transfer the same to its headquarters in Islamabad. He said the authority would equip district accounts, DCO and EDO offices with latest computer systems for the purpose, which would be then connected to its headquarters and the Punjab Civil Secretariat through high-speed networking technologies.

The database would help the government in e-governance, besides enabling it to monitor payroll and leave record, and data on retirement, promotion and placement programmes, electronically, he said.

Nadra, he said, was also preparing lookup libraries of organisational units’ employees’ data (grades, designation, groups, scales, etc.) and human resource attributes (leave types, transfers, promotions, etc.).

The provincial government will reportedly appoint department and district representatives to conduct the census at all levels and make sure timely provision of information and other related material. The authority will transfer the data to PIFRA central server. PIFRA will apply business rules duly approved by the provincial government for the validation of electronic record and also check the duplication on the basis of CNIC.

Under the project, Nadra will process only those applications that have original CNIC and run the required internal systematic validation and data sanity checks, ensuring mandatory fields. After validation, ready-to-print batch will be sent to the “Employee’s Identity Card” (EIDC), which will then be dispatched to the district concerned.

Modification and reporting on the data will be handled through PIFRA SAP R/3, which include personal data (name, address, etc) and employment attributes (appo-intment, posting, promotion, etc).