When President Rodrigo Duterte signed Republic Act No. 11055 creating a national ID system, we thought we would soon join the ranks of countries that have long required their citizens to have their own distinct identification.
The Philippine Identification System or PhilID seeks to harmonize, integrate and interconnect government IDs by establishing a single national ID system. It is considered a governance tool that would cut red tape, deter corruption in public transactions and increase government efficiency by using more accurate demographics in providing social services.
Every Filipino and resident alien of the country would be identified via the use of a PhilID number which would be a randomly generated, unique and permanent ID number assigned to each individual to be incorporated in all ID systems of government agencies.
Those who would apply for the PhilID will have their personal details collected, such as full name, gender, blood type, date and place of birth, marital status and photo. Other personal data, such as mobile number and e-mail address (which are optional), and biometrics data that include a full set of fingerprints, facial image and iris scan, will be stored in the Philippine ID System, or PhilSys, a centralized database established by the law to house all vital information generated by the system. PhilSys will be managed and safeguarded by the Philippine Statistics Authority.
It's a worthwhile project that deserves to be implemented soonest as it would facilitate transactions with both the public and private sectors.
But what's this we hear that unseen hands are bent on preventing the PSA from awarding the P1.7-billion second phase of its PhilSys project to the winning bidder: The joint venture between Idemia Identity and Security France (or Idemia Morpho) and FMC Solutions Inc.?
Last Nov. 19, in a transparent public auction, the Idemia Morpho-led JV offered the lowest bid of P684 million, as against the P877.999 million offer of Dermalog with Microgenesis and Airspeed, P879,988 million offer of Gemalto and Netix, and the P1.016 billion offer of NEC and LDLA.
The second PhilSys package being auctioned off by the PSA covers the supply and delivery of the Automated Biometric Identification System for the National ID project, which is the part where the biometric and other information of every citizen is encoded into the system as well as in the national ID card.
If the PSA were to officially award the second phase of the PhilSys project to Idemia Morpho, Filipino taxpayers would no doubt benefit as its P684-million offer is P194 million lower than that of the next lowest bidder, and would actually save the government more than P1 billion as P1.7 billion had actually been earmarked for this priority project.
But Idemia Morpho has been the subject of what appears to be a demolition job to smear its reputation, including its alleged blacklisting by the World Bank and supposed hitches in previous projects in three countries. Then there's the claim that the supplier is offering an inferior system simply because it has made the cheapest offer among all four bidders. The joint venture stoutly denies all these as fake news.
It's simply not true, Idemia Morpho insists, that it is a provider of low-quality or inferior solutions, as it can boast of an outstanding track record for several decades now in implementing cutting-edge projects in a number of countries.
In fact, the company has been selected by Changi Airport in Singapore to deliver identification and authentication services as passengers pass through the airport’s Terminal 4.
The UK Home Office Biometrics Programme has awarded a five-year contract to Idemia to deliver a new Fingerprint Matcher service to guarantee increased accuracy fingerprint services at what is considered one of the world leaders in government biometric programs.
In Australia, Idemia has secured a US$24.4-million contract to support the national fingerprint database of the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission to include face and palm biometrics.
In New Zealand, the airports of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch have, for 10 years now, been using Morpho Australasia’s Smartgate to give travelers the option of self-processing through passport control in these terminals.
Since January this year, about 1.3-million ID cards have been used in Estonia or almost 98 percent of its population, and about 300,000 of them have been using their cards electronically on a weekly basis.
Idemia Morpho vouches for its superior technology, considering that these are in top ranks in many biometric algorithm testing by the US government.
But perhaps the best proof that the joint venture can very well satisfy specific Philippine requirements is that it has been contracted to put up the Aadhar National ID of India. This is regarded as the world’s most ambitious biometrics project as it seeks to capture India's 1.25-billion people. There are only 104-million Filipinos targeted for coverage under PhilSys, so the joint venture is confident that they can do a good job here once given the go-signal to undertake the project.
ernhil@yahoo.com
