Draft:Code for Pakistan

Introduction
Code for Pakistan is a non-partisan, non-political, not-for-profit organization bringing together civic-minded software developers to use technology to innovate in public services, by creating open source solutions to address the needs of citizens. The organization has worked on several projects with the KP government under the KP Government Innovation Fellowship Program, leading towards digital transformation in the public sector. The organization focuses on e-governance, open data, open source solutions, and civic engagement...

Founding and History
Code for Pakistan is modeled after Code for America and is a member of the Code for All network. an international community of civic tech organisations. Code for Pakistan was founded by Sheba Najmi who co-hosted Pakistan’s first civic hackathon with Sabeen Mahmud in 2013 in Karachi with support from The Second Floor and P@SHA.

In 2014, Code for Pakistan started a Fellowship Program with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government. This program is modeled after Code for America’s Fellowship Program designed to resource and train community members and partner them with local government to improve service delivery.

Since 2013, Code for Pakistan has organized civic hackathons and other community engagement events as a platform to devise tech solutions, every year in different cities in collaboration with partner organizations.

Government Innovation Fellowship Program
Code for Pakistan introduced the KP Government Innovation Fellowship Program in 2014 in collaboration with the World Bank. The Fellowship Program is a six-month program where a team of developers, designers, researchers, and content writers collaborate to build digital solutions and improve and innovate in government services. Solutions developed through the Fellowship Program are solicited in a variety of public domains such as healthcare, crime, disaster management, citizen engagement, transportation, traffic, education, etc. Eighty seven fellows have graduated from this program in the last five years. Some of the projects developed under the program include Raabta. Public Toilet Finder and PSRA website. The program is currently in its 6th cycle and is being handled remotely because of Covid-19.

Civic Innovation Labs
Code for Pakistan runs city-based civic innovation labs which are based on Code for America’s Brigades and Code for Germany’s Open Knowledge Labs. These labs are run by volunteers who work to develop digital platforms and solutions, and foster a community of developers. Volunteers from Islamabad CIL regularly organize civic hackathons across Pakistan every year in collaboration with public and private sector entities. These volunteers developed a project (Legis) to track the performance of national legislators in collaboration with the Centre for Governance and Public Accountability.

Other projects
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Code for Pakistan supported Digital Pakistan develop COVID-19 dashboards for the government. Code for Pakistan also supported the Ministry of National Health Services Regulations and Coordination set up a tele health platform to help identify and deal with the pandemic.