Tender bend straightens with issue of temporary NICs
Young Sri Lankans, reaching the age of 16 years and eligible to apply for a National Identity Card (NIC), will receive temporary plastic NICs due to the delay in the issue of the long-awaited electronic cards with biometric data.
The temporary cards titled Interim NIC (INIC) will replace the 44-year old manually written laminated identity cards, a top official said, adding that this is until new biometric NICs applicable to the whole population is ready for issue.
Viyani Gunathilake, new Commissioner General of the Department for the Registration of Persons (DRP), told the Business Times, that the department was working through several changes and along with technological developments had devised the INIC with highly secured characteristics.
This card establishes the identity of a person, accurately and credibly because it is issued with photographs of International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standards and all data in the card will be printed in all 3 languages, i.e. Sinhala, Tamil and English.
Mr. Gunathilake noted that an order will be placed to print 1 million INICs soon after awarding of the tender to the eligible bidder for the printing contract by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Wayamba Development and Cultural Affairs.
The ministry has already selected a prospective company after proper evaluation of bids as there were some alleged irregularities in selection criteria some time back, he said adding that letters of intent were sent to all bidders who applied for the tender.
The issue of new identity cards was delayed owing to irregularities after a bid of Rs.40 per card was rejected and instead awarded to a higher and more costly bid of Rs. 80 per card last year to print 1 million cards.
The tender was cancelled, bids revaluated and a new company is to be selected, a process which has now been completed, he revealed.
The DRP is now working to establish a National Persons Registry as an electronic data system and issue e-NICs with modern technological security features.
This database will store bio data of persons of 15 years or above, fingerprints as biometrics and a photograph taken according to ICAO standards and issue an e-NIC during a specific time period for the persons completing the eligible age. Age 15 will be the eligibility age to receive an electronic NIC compared to 16 years at present.
Elaborating on the progress of the project, Mr. Gunathilake said that programmes to educate the public and stakeholders on data and biometric capturing have been conducted.
A pilot programme for data capturing was conducted in 27 Divisional Secretariats in the Galle, Matara, and Hambantota Districts in September 2014 with the approval of the Presidential Steering Committee.
Restructuring of Departmental units at the Divisional Secretariats/Provisional Offices and the Head Office, providing of infrastructure facilities, recruitment of staff and training required for the issuances of e-NIC have been carried out.
A sum of Rs. 22.5 billion has been allocated from the Treasury since 2011 to this e-NIC project which has been held up due to various obstacles, official sources revealed.
According to the DRP, in addition to biometrics, the proposed system also seeks to gather information such as family details and eligibility to receive welfare (Samurdhi), etc for all Sri Lankans 15 years of age and above.  Although the electronic NIC project commenced in 2011, it was suspended due to legal barriers.
Amendments to the relevant act were passed on 21 June 2016 and the project has been restarted in August 2016 with all 332 Divisional Secretariats linked to the automated system of the department.
Within the existing legal framework, data sharing among external agencies is legal with MOU arrangements, the Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts revealed in its latest report.
After the completion of developments to the system, the new identity card could be issued within a time limit of two weeks replacing the old with the new card, the committee said.
In 2017, GCE (O/L) applicants would be issued with new Electronic National Identity cards, the committee observed.
The committee was of the opinion that, when the personal data collected by the DRP is shared among other institutions the privacy of the person should be absolutely safeguarded.
The committees have directed the CEO, Managing Director ICTA, to consider this matter seriously.
Four separate tenders were called to select suitable service providers for the project consisted of four phases since 2011.
The department has already set up a National Register of Persons with over 800 officials recruited to process data in order to begin issuing e-NICs within a short period of time.