A prominent tech advocate and digital industry commentator has sharply criticized Pakistan’s government procurement policies, arguing that existing rules systematically exclude capable local software companies from major public sector contracts despite the country’s stated goal of building a #DigitalPakistan.
The controversy centers on a Request for Bids (RFB) issued by the Punjab Urban Land Systems Enhancement (PULSE) project, where eligibility criteria require solution providers to be listed in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. It is a proprietary, Western-centric industry analysis tool that helps assess. According to this viral LinkedIn post, this benchmark does not measure technical competence or performance but instead reflects marketing spend and global market presence, automatically disqualifying many Pakistani firms that have built competitive products.
Critics argue that such policies undermine national goals like those espoused by the Digital Pakistan initiative, a government-backed drive to boost connectivity, digital infrastructure, tech skills and innovation across the country. They contend that by tying local procurement to proprietary, foreign indicators rather than merit-based technical evaluation, government agencies are inadvertently funneling public funds out of Pakistan to multinational vendors instead of strengthening the domestic tech ecosystem.
The post calls on the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) and the Ministry of IT and Telecommunications to adopt a “Local First” mandate that prioritizes local firms based on technical performance, compliance and innovation rather than on Gartner rankings or similar external labels. The post also warns that without such reforms, Pakistan risks eroding its digital sovereignty, stifling local innovation and driving its best engineers to seek opportunities abroad.
The LinkedIn post concludes with an ironic statement that says the solutions provided in the post “will never be implemented.” Moreover:
If we don’t trust our own software to secure our land records, why should the rest of the world trust it for their enterprises?
Let’s stop being a market for others and start being a home for our own.
With the establishment of national digital bodies like the Pakistan Digital Authority to guide implementation of the Digital Masterplan, addressing such structural barriers may be critical to ensuring that local talent and companies play a substantive role in the country’s digital transformation.
