110M Filipinos covered by National ID in 2022

All 110 million Filipinos will be enrolled in the national ID system before the end of President Duterte‘s term of office in mid-2022, the government said on Monday.

In a statement, the Philippine Statistics Authority said it is “on course” in the implementation of its strategic blueprint for the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) – the proposed proof of identity for all citizens meant to simplify public and private transactions.

Its enabling law was signed by Mr. Duterte last year in line with the government’s drive to curtail bureaucratic red tape.

“We are on track to have the system fully operational and to start the mass registration by mid-2020, and complete the enrollment of the population by mid-2022,” said Undersecretary Dennis Mapa who is also the country’s National Statistician and Civil Registrar.

This year, the PSA has finished procuring the registration kits which is one of the five major procurement blocks of the program.

In the pipeline for PhilSys are the procurement of the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), System Integrator (SI), and registration centers. For card production, the PSA is in partnership with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

The pilot test registration involving a small number of individuals from the National Capital Region started on Sept. 2, including select Department of Social Welfare and Development beneficiaries, employees of PSA and National Economic and Development Authority.

“The PSA sees the utmost importance for the PhilSys to first undergo a series of pilot testing before finally launching it to the public,” Mapa said. “We want to ensure that the processes are efficient, the systems are fully functional, and all information within the system are secure.”

The pilot test registration will run until June 2020.

The first part will involve biometric and demographic capturing processes. Once the system is stable, operations will expand to cover select groups from nearby regions, Regions III and IV-A, based on different geographical typologies.

Set to begin on May 2020, the PSA will extend the pilot registration process to test the end-to-end system which essentially involves deduplication, generation of unique PhilSys Numbers (PSN), and card printing and issuance.

Registration will be scaled-up and open to the public by July 2020. Overseas Filipinos are targeted to be registered in 2021.

“We, at the PSA and our partners in PhilSys, take very seriously the responsibility to ensure the security and integrity of the personal data of Filipinos,” Mapa added.

“We are pushing with multiple pilot testing to continuously improve the system and level up it security features before launching it to the public,” he said./TSB