About

Why Idraak Exists

Pakistan produces a large amount of public data across dozens of government agencies, international organizations, and research bodies. But most of it is scattered, hard to access, and difficult to compare.

Idraak's mission is to deliver clear, data-driven analysis on Pakistan's social and economic challenges, translating evidence into accessible insights for the public, policymakers, and practitioners. We do this through three things: in-depth articles that examine specific policy questions with human-written analysis, an AI-powered question tool for exploratory research across our datasets, and an open data dashboard for direct access to the numbers.

The platform brings together data from PBS, SBP, World Bank, WHO, ILO, UNICEF, and other sources into one searchable place with consistent formatting and full source attribution.

8,000+

Datasets

20M+

Data points

1960–2026

Coverage

6+

Sources

Why “Idraak”?

The word idraak (ادراک) in Urdu means perception, understanding, and insight. It reflects our goal: to help people see Pakistan's challenges clearly through data, so that understanding can lead to action.

Data Sources

Every indicator is traceable to its original source:

World Bank WHO UNICEF ILO PBS SBP

The Team

Person 1

Person 1

Policy & Editorial

Research direction, article writing, and policy analysis. Connects indicators to governance context and social outcomes.

Person 2

Person 2

Technology & AI

Technical direction, platform architecture, and AI systems. Designs the analytics and exploration tools users interact with.

Methodology

How It Works

Data is collected from official repositories (World Bank, WHO, PBS, SBP, and others), standardized into a common schema with consistent country codes and time periods, and indexed for fast retrieval. Every data point is traceable to its source organization and original methodology.

Each of the 8,000+ indicators is semantically embedded so that when a user asks a question, the system can retrieve the most relevant datasets based on meaning rather than keyword matching. This is what powers the "Ask Your Question" feature: a natural-language query is matched against these embeddings to find related indicators, which are then used to generate charts and analysis.

AI Usage Policy

Where AI Is Used

Articles

Human-written

Researched and written entirely by people. No AI is used in the writing or editorial process.

Dashboard

No AI

Raw data access. The platform returns numbers exactly as reported by the original source.

Ask Your Question

AI-generated

End-to-end automated. AI retrieves datasets, generates charts, and writes a summary. Intended as an exploratory starting point.

AI Capabilities and Limitations

What AI can do on this platform

  • Search and retrieve relevant datasets from 8,000+ indicators
  • Generate charts and visualizations from source data
  • Identify statistical trends and patterns across time series
  • Produce exploratory summaries grounded in retrieved data
  • Compare indicators across countries and time periods

What AI cannot do

  • Determine whether one indicator causes another
  • Assess data quality or flag methodology changes in sources
  • Account for Pakistan-specific context like regional disparities
  • Make policy recommendations or normative judgements
  • Replace expert analysis on complex social and economic questions

Open & Transparent

Idraak is built on the principle that public data should be publicly accessible. Our source code is available on GitHub, and every chart and report links back to its underlying datasets.

Get in Touch

Have questions, feedback, or ideas for collaboration? Reach out through our GitHub page.