PSA website crashes due to surge in nat’l ID applicants

A surge in applicants overwhelmed the dedicated portal during the first day of online registration for the national ID.

“We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the downtime of the pilot launch of the PhilSys (Philippine Identification System) online Step 1 registration website earlier today,” the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said in a statement on Friday, referring to the portal register.philsys.gov.ph.

“We received more than 40,000 registration requests during the first minutes of the pilot launch. This caused delays in the sending of the one-time passwords necessary to proceed with the registration,” the PSA said.

Technical challenge

“We are urgently looking into the issue and updating the website to resolve this technical challenge,” the PSA said, adding that it will announce on its official Facebook page when the website will function again.

The first of three steps to obtain a national ID involved collection of demographic data such as full name, sex, date and place of birth, blood type, permanent and present address, as well as citizenship.

This first registration step was conducted house-to-house starting October last year in 32 pilot provinces.

The government prioritized heads of poor families for PhilSys so their national IDs will later on serve as valid proof of their identities whenever there’s a need to distribute social assistance during national emergencies such as the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic.

Since early this year, the PSA has expanded Step 1 to Metro Manila and other provinces.