Pakistan’s National Artificial Intelligence Policy promises scale: one million trained professionals, thousands of trainers and scholarships, new centres of excellence, an AI fund, and wider use of the technology across government and industry. The federal cabinet’s July 30 approval gives the country an opportunity to set a standard that matters more than the number of courses, systems or pilot projects launched. Pakistan should require every consequential public-sector AI deployment to produce a simple public-service evidence record.

The need is immediate. The government recently launched an AI-based Prime Minister Office System designed to record, communicate, monitor and track directives from issuance through completion. That could make administration faster and more accountable. It could also create a new layer of automated opacity if officials cannot explain which recommendations came from software, who reviewed them, what information shaped them, and who remained responsible for the final action.

A public-service evidence record would answer those questions without publishing sensitive data or proprietary code. For each consequential AI-supported workflow, an agency should record five things: the task assigned to the system; the data categories it used; the official responsible for review; any material change made after human review; and the result, correction or incident that followed.

This is not a demand for........

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