Pakistan launched its first-ever digital population and housing census on Wednesday in an effort to securely gather demographic data on every individual ahead of this year's parliamentary elections, officials said.
The digital count will provide data for policy decisions, which now are based on the 2017 census that counted the population at 207 million people. It's also meant to beef up security and avoid another morass like the one that beset the 2021 census. The results of that count, which was done manually, were never announced over complaints about errors and exclusion.
