Sri Lanka ID Gearing Up to Go Digital

Sri Lanka’s unique digital ID project, prepared jointly by the Sri Lanka Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) and the Department of Registration of Persons, is about to go live, according to news reports in the country.

Speaking to The Sunday Morning Business, ICTA Chairman Lalith Gamage said that the organisation is in the process of collecting, collating, and consolidating into one set all the information of Sri Lanka’s citizens, which would then be used to generate and release a unique ID.

‘ICTA is in the process of developing software and have provided the proof of concept to collect the biometric information of the people,’ he stated.

The unique digital identity card is set to digitise the process of submitting accurate details of all citizens and enable the presentation of their information on the ID cards in a simpler manner to different government departments which are governed by different legal provisions.

These departments will then have access to the details online.

Gamage further pointed out that once the biometric information is submitted – which would be inclusive of fingerprints, a picture of the iris, and a photo – it will be incorporated into the unique digital IDs and released to the public.

The unique ID card will be fed with the citizen’s biometric details that would be required for obtaining a passport, driving licence, pension, state (Samurdhi) benefits, and paying taxes. In addition, the card will also hold information that is required when casting a vote at elections.

The processing of unique digital IDs will be carried out under the close supervision of an expert panel, the ICTA, and the Presidential Task Force.

Speaking about the digital ID card, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa stated: ‘establishing citizen service centres to adopt new technologies for public service delivery, introducing a digital and electronic payment system to pay traffic fines, and establishing an eProcurement system to eliminate bribery and corruption, among others, are envisaged under this component. Very soon, a unique digital identity card with state-of-the-art technology for every citizen, will be a reality.’ 

Additionally, the Sri Lankan government is working to integrate the National Identity Card (NIC) into other forms of functional identity, creating some interoperability between different identity registers, such as where passports and driving licences can be used to validate identity because they contain an individual’s NIC number.

In a recent update to the project presented at the Digital Lanka, Green Tech, Huawei Digital Congress 2022, in Colombo, Secretary to the Ministry of Technology and Chairman of the Director General of Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) Jayantha de Silva said: ‘Base work is mostly completed. We will be incorporating ten fingerprints, iris and face recognition soon’, noting that the requirement of connectivity became more and more important with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.