National Identification (NID) Card

Can you imagine how many times you may need to produce your personal profile during your life? How many times you get frustrated when your credentials are not correct? Just imagine, your personal and family informations are important from the day you born - Birth certificate, School admission application, Citizenship certificate, College admission form. Similar information required for starting your business, getting driving license for riding your first motorbike, acquiring and transferring properties, registering your marriage, migrating from district to district, casting vote for your favorite leader, getting passport for traveling abroad, applying for the job and so many events and in so many situations you will have to disclose your personal identification. So your personal information is scattered everywhere. Besides that the agencies which deal with you on such situations, each one of those should process, store, retain your information separately and definitely waste of resources, time, money. On top of that, you can not expect consistency on the information of the same person in each agency. When we are planning for the e-governance implementation in Nepal, its a high time to think about an appropriate solution for this. Many countries in our region and many countries in the world have come up with the card based identity solution. Why not we go for the similar option?

Modern ID cards bear little resemblance to the traditional "photograph on piece of cardboard" and are often hi-tech smart cards capable of being swiped and read by computer. ID card is a identity document in the form of a small standard-sized card (most of the banks in urban areas issue debit and credit cards with similar card technology). Unlike other forms of documentation, which only have a single purpose such as authorizing bank transfers or proving membership of a library, an ID card should assert the bearer's identity. The ID card, which may be issued by the government should assert a unique single civil identity for a person, thus defining that person's identity purely in relation to the country. New technologies allow ID cards to contain biometric information, such as photographs, face, hand or iris measurements, or fingerprints, and other supporting database - including full name, parents' names, address, profession, nationality, medical information like blood type, Rhesus factor(Rh factor) and many other information. In addition to that it may include the transactional information like driving license information, property ownership information, passport information etc.

It is obvious that the primary data requirement for the effective e-Governance is the Citizen database and identifying citizen may be the National ID (NID) Card. It should be a multipurpose secured and authentic ID card. Nepal government should be able to provide such card to the citizens at a cost effective basis, may be for free. Hence there is a need to select the right technology for the preparation of the card and online issue of the card also needs to be determined. This challenge must be taken up by the consortium of public and private industries, academic institutions with the Government. I would suggest introducing Single multipurpose National ID card (NID) containing all personal and family information, photo, finger print of the person and other transactional information for different purposes.

NID would be a useful administrative tool that will increase government efficiency and cut down on crime. If the government doesn't issue ID cards, private companies will require equivalent documents, such as a driver license, which are not properly suited for identity purposes. crimes such as identity theft would be drastically reduced, and are indeed unknown in countries where ID cards are required to open a bank accounts. To make the NID work, it should be a citizen-driven movement. It is a political issue. Cards for everything from passport and visa, voter ID, drivers license, vehicle registration, weapon permit, health care and welfare and secured services should come under its umbrella of NID. From 2010 you need Electronic Machine Readable Passport to travel abroad according to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) requirements. Some of the countries already use biometric passports.

Electronic cards are used increasingly by various governments, million passports are in electronic format. Smart Cards based IDs seem to be part of life in those countries. E-passports mean automated entry and exit at airports, all the while enhancing two mutually exclusive elements-security and management of passenger flows. Not only Singapore, Japan, Korea, USA, UK, but there are several developing countries that are expanding their use of smart cards as well. Take the example of multipurpose card (myKad) in Malaysia, vehicle registration and driver licenses' in El Salvador, ID cards in Oman, health care cards in Slovenia and vehicle registration in India. Government security in the US, UK, - there are whole range of areas where smart card usage is applicable and beneficial.

During my interactions with different agencies while preparing investment plan for the e-governance, I found a greater enthusiasm for putting driving licenses, vehicle registration, Citizenship certificate, passports etc., on the card. If national broadband network can be started and made available in cities and to the last village, East to west, Himalayan region to plain Terai, a number of e-services can be delivered, which would provide a government-citizen interface of tremendous value. The National ID card is the foundation of trust for e-governance. A large number of services can be listed, which could make all the difference in creating a efficient government-citizen integration.

The scale and range of the National ID card business is so vast that multi-stakeholder partnership (may be the Public Private Partnership) is the only perceived way it could be successfully implemented for all the citizens of Nepal. For all these services however, the cards need to be secure against fraud and tampering. It should be a strong identification, with no threat to customer privacy, providing a better service to the clients and an easy to deploy system. Visit www.rajeshshakya.com for other details.