Pakistan, July 1 -- Pakistan has published a draft National Data Governance Policy, proposing to treat government data as a strategic national asset held under the state's sovereign control while laying out a broad framework governing everything from artificial intelligence and cross-border data transfers to citizen privacy, digital public services and the data economy.

The draft policy, uploaded on the Ministry of Information Technology's website last week for public consultation, seeks to establish common rules for how federal government agencies collect, store, share and use data while creating new institutions to oversee implementation and setting standards for emerging technologies.

"Government data is a strategic national asset of...