What iTAP Tracks
Pakistan keeps getting graded by global scorecards on corruption and governance, and every time the rankings come out, they dominate headlines for a few days. Then they fade, leaving behind the same question policymakers have asked for years: what exactly should we fix, where, and in which office first? That’s the core problem with most international indices. They help outsiders compare countries, but they rarely help insiders improve institutions. They use standardized tools that miss local administrative realities, and they focus on national rankings, not the everyday places where Pakistanis actually meet the state. If accountability is meant to change lives, an index has to start from lived experience, not distant impressions.
That is why the Index of Transparency and Accountability in Pakistan (iTAP) matters. It is not another headline-friendly ranking built on opaque formulas. It is a homegrown measurement effort conceived by the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry, a body that has both an economic stake and a practical interest in cleaner, faster public services. The value of an indigenous index is simple. It can be tracked over time, broken down sub-nationally, and used to push specific reforms in specific institutions.
It can also create healthy competition among public bodies by making performance visible, not through gossip or viral clips, but through repeatable data
iTAP’s logic is also more honest about what people feel versus what they face. In Pakistan, perceptions of corruption are often shaped by political fights, media narratives, and a general frustration with slow services. Those perceptions are real, but they are not the same as personal experience. Most international indices lean heavily on expert ratings and secondary sources, which can amplify the perception side and blur the experience side. iTAP tries to separate the two on purpose. Its objectives are clear: to produce an up-to-date local index that reflects regional and institutional realities, and to measure the gap between what people believe and what they actually encounter in bribery, nepotism, and illicit enrichment.
The credibility of this effort rests on its method. iTAP did not rely on a small online sample or a single city. It was built with technical collaboration from Ipsos and the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. Interviews were conducted face-to-face using Computer-Assisted Personal Interviews, with digital recording for quality checks. Sampling drew on the Pakistan Digital Census 2024 baseline and used multistage systematic probability random sampling. Post survey weights from PBS helped ensure the results represent the national population.
The coverage is difficult to dismiss, with over 6,000 respondents across 82 districts and 195 tehsils, balanced by gender and spanning both urban and rural areas
Just as important is what iTAP chose to measure. Instead of scoring abstract ideas like “rule of law” in the air, it focused on institutions people interact with most. A pilot study of 300 people helped shortlist 15 public institutions based on awareness and interaction. The list is telling because it maps daily friction points. Police, NADRA, traffic police, judiciary, WAPDA and DISCOs, public education, government hospitals, gas utilities like SSGC and SNGPL, municipal services, administrative offices like AC and DC, passport services, excise, FBR inland and customs, and land record management, including patwaris. If you want to understand how citizens experience the state, this is where you look.
The questionnaire also signals seriousness. It was structured into eight sections with 36 questions, separating perception and lived experience for bribery, nepotism, and illicit enrichment, while also capturing good practices, satisfaction, awareness, interaction levels, and demographics. That design matters because it prevents a common mistake, treating corruption as only one thing. A bribe demand at a counter is not the same as patronage in hiring, and both are different from wealth accumulation by officials. Without separating these, you end up with noise.
The headline results are both sobering and hopeful, depending on how you read them. On bribery, 68 percent of Pakistanis perceive it as common, but only 27 percent reported being asked to pay one. On nepotism, 56 percent perceive it as widespread, but 24 percent have personally faced it. The biggest gap is illicit enrichment; 59 percent believe it is common among public officers, yet only 5 percent personally know an officer who has illicitly enriched themselves. That does not mean illicit enrichment is rare; it may mean it is harder to observe directly.
But the gap still matters, because policy built only on perception can drift into performative crackdowns, while policy built on measured experience can target the real touchpoints where citizens pay costs
When the findings are aggregated into composite index scores, the difference becomes stark. The Perception Index Score is 67.06, while the Lived Experiences Index Score is 15.6. That gap is the story of governance in Pakistan today. People expect the worst, but many do not personally encounter the worst in their last interactions. In fact, 67 percent reported no experience with any corruption or malpractice during their interactions with public institutions. If that figure holds over time, it is an opportunity, not an excuse. It suggests that reforms can focus on the minority of interactions that poison trust, while also communicating improvements so perception does not stay permanently stuck in cynicism.
Institution rankings add another layer. In terms of public perception scoring, traffic police, government hospitals, and FBR inland revenue rank best. On the experience index, government hospitals top the list, followed by NADRA and public educational institutions. These results will surprise some readers, especially the hospital and FBR parts, because these sectors often get blamed first. But that is exactly why local measurement is useful. It can challenge lazy assumptions, identify where reforms have quietly worked, and push attention toward the offices where citizens’ experiences are still consistently bad.
The “other insights” are arguably the most actionable. NADRA holds the highest public satisfaction rating, which hints at what competence looks like when process reforms and digitization actually reach people. At the same time, there is a clear engagement gap. NAB is the most recognized anti-corruption agency, with 37 percent top-of-mind recall, yet overall interaction and engagement with anti-corruption bodies is only 8 percent. Recognition without use usually means people do not expect help, do not know how to report, or fear consequences. That fear is reinforced by the awareness gap in legal protections.
Only 11 percent are familiar with Right to Information laws, and 15 percent know about whistleblower protection laws. In practical terms, Pakistan is trying to fight corruption with a public that does not know its rights and does not trust reporting channels
So what should iTAP lead to, beyond a report launch? First, it should shift the national conversation from rankings to reform pathways. Second, it should drive sub-national benchmarking, district and tehsil level dashboards that let chief secretaries, commissioners, and department heads see where friction clusters. Third, it should push institutions to compete on service standards, complaint resolution, and transparency steps that citizens can feel, not just policy memos. Fourth, it should treat perception itself as a policy problem. If experiences improve but perceptions stay toxic, legitimacy still suffers. That means government and institutions need credible communication, published service metrics, public feedback loops, and visible enforcement against the few repeat offenders who distort public trust for everyone.
Pakistan does not need another imported mirror that tells it it looks bad. It needs a local instrument that tells it where the cracks are, which repairs work, and how progress changes people’s daily encounters with the state. iTAP, if kept independent, repeated regularly, and used for real performance management, can become that instrument. The real test will not be the first set of numbers. It will be whether the same institutions show measurable improvement on the lived experience index year after year, and whether the country finally learns to close the gap between what people fear and what they actually face.
