The Government Apps That Collect From You Are Updated. The Rest Are Not.

We checked Pakistan's government apps on the store on 12 August 2026, recording who publishes each one and when it was last updated.

Two of them had been updated the day before: NADRA's identity app and FBR's tax app.

Two others have not been touched since 2022. Both are welfare apps.

What we found, by last update

PTA DVS is still on version 1.0, nearly two years after release.

The pattern, without the adjective

We are going to state this plainly and leave the conclusion where it belongs.

The two apps shipped the day before we looked are the national identity register and the tax portal. The apps that have gone years without a release are the health card and the social protection ones.

That is what the release dates say. We do not know anyone's internal reasons, we are not alleging that welfare was deliberately deprioritised, and there are perfectly ordinary explanations, including that a programme may have moved to a web portal instead.

But the dates are the dates.

An old app is not necessarily a broken app

Worth saying clearly, because the opposite reading would be unfair.

Software that has not been updated in four years can work exactly as it did on the day it shipped. A version number is not a health check.

What a long gap does tell you is that nobody is likely to fix it quickly if it stops working, and that it may not have kept pace with changes in the operating system underneath it. On an app you need in a hurry, such as at a hospital desk, that is a practical risk rather than a theoretical one.

So treat an old app as usable but not dependable, and know the web route as a fallback.

BISP has no app under its own name

Pakistan's largest social protection programme reaches millions of households. Searching the Pakistan storefront for it returned no app published under its own name.

What came back instead was a 2022 app published by a private company, and a 2022 Sehat Card app.

We are reporting that as an absence we could not resolve rather than claiming BISP has never had one. It may exist under a name our search did not match, or the programme may have chosen the web route deliberately.

Either way, the practical answer for a reader is the 8171 web portal, which works and which we walk through in our guide to checking BISP eligibility and payment.

Check the seller, not the app name

This is the same lesson as the Pak Hajj apps, and it keeps recurring.

Alongside the genuine PTA listing sits a PTA Mobile Tax Calculator published by a private developer. We are not suggesting anything is wrong with it. We are pointing out that the app name carries a regulator's initials and the publisher is a company.

1. Read the seller line under the title. It is the only field that identifies who actually made the app.
2. NADRA's app is published by the National Database and Registration Authority.
3. FBR's app is published by the Federal Board of Revenue.
4. Never sideload a government app from a download site, particularly one that will see your CNIC or take a payment.
5. If an app looks abandoned, use the web service instead rather than assuming it is the only route.

We found the same name-collision problem days ago with three government apps called Pak Hajj, days before Hajj payments open through one of them.

How we checked, and what this does not cover

Queried through Apple's public search interface against the Pakistan storefront on 12 August 2026. Seller names, versions and release dates are exactly as the store returned them.

This round covers Apple only. Android listings are a separate sweep and we have not done them yet, so an app that looks neglected here may be maintained on Android. That is unfinished work rather than a conclusion.

Store listings also change. An app updated the week after we looked would make this page wrong, which is why every date is stamped. If we have a detail wrong, our corrections policy explains how to tell us.

This is the seventh time we have run this kind of test. Earlier rounds covered government websites and flood warning sources.

Questions readers are asking

What is the official NADRA app?

PAK IDENTITY, published by the National Database and Registration Authority. It was updated on 11 August 2026, making it one of the most actively maintained government apps we found.

Is there an official BISP app?

Our search of the Pakistan storefront returned none under BISP's own name. Use the 8171 web portal, which is the route we cover in our BISP guide.

What is the FBR app called?

Tax Asaan, published by the Federal Board of Revenue, updated 11 August 2026.

Are old government apps safe to use?

An app that has not been updated can still work. The risk is that nobody is maintaining it, so if it breaks after an operating system update it may stay broken. Know the web alternative.

How do I tell a fake government app from a real one?

Read the seller name under the title rather than the app name. Official apps list the authority itself as publisher.

Which government apps are actively maintained?

On the dates we checked, PAK IDENTITY and Tax Asaan were both updated on 11 August 2026, with Punjab Police Pakistan and the Pakistan Citizen's Portal updated in April 2026.

Does this cover Android?

No. This round is the Apple store only. An Android sweep is separate work we have not completed.