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e-passports: NPC reveals Govt. could have avoided delays and extra costs
View(s):By Ranjith Padmasiri
The Public Security Ministry and the Department of Immigration and Emigration (DIE) could have avoided unnecessary delays and additional costs if they had initiated the procurement of a personalisation system for e-passports in parallel with the tender to procure five million such passports, the National Procurement Commission (NPC) has informed the Court of Appeal.
The NPC’s observations on the matter were submitted to the Court through a motion this week by Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Sumathi Dharmawardena. The tender for the five million e-passports, awarded to Thales DIS Finland OY and its Sri Lankan partner, Just In Time (JIT) Technologies (Pvt) Ltd, is being challenged by the losing bidder Epic Lanka (Pvt) Ltd.
In its observations, the NPC noted that if the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and other software/hardware are required separately for the personalisation of the passports, the procurement for these should have been initiated in parallel with the procurement of the e-passports. A PKI is used to confirm each passport holder’s identity. A two-key encryption allows the Sri Lankan passport’s PKI to be lodged with the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s public key directory (PKD) for access by immigration entities worldwide.
If the aggregated cost of PKI and related software/hardware for personalisation of e-passports, cost of additional lamination machines, and the awarded price to procure five million e-passports, is more than the offered prices of the second lowest bidder (Metropolitan Technologies (Pvt) Ltd), or the third lowest bidder (Epic Lanka (Pvt) Ltd), the additional costs may be considered as a loss to the government and injustice made to the second and third lowest bidders. This is unless the e-passports proposed by both these bidders are also not compatible with the existing personalisation system and cannot be personalised without a PKI, the NPC emphasised.
Moreover, the necessity for procuring 750,000 chipless passports (to manage the passport crisis) would not have arisen if there had been no delay in the personalisation of the e-passports, or if the e-passports of the selected bidder had been compatible with the existing system, enabling personalisation using existing machinery, the NPC said.
It added that the purchasing of chipless passports at the price of Euro 4.52 a passport seems to be “not economical” compared to the awarded price of e-passports (Euro 4.62 a passport). Notwithstanding this, if the need to procure 750,000 chipless passports had been identified on time and incorporated into the procurement plan for the year, there would be a possibility for purchasing chipless passports at a more competitive price by following a competitive bidding procedure, the NPC has pointed out.
If the procurement of the PKI is unavoidable for the personalisation of e-passports, the purpose of the bidding requirement stipulated in the bidding document stating that “The passports shall be personalised with the chip using existing machinery” is questionable, the Commission observed. It said that neither the DIE nor the Public Security Ministry had given a proper explanation in response to the issue raised by the complainants that, “One of the key and mandatory requirements was that the passports had to be personalised using the existing personalisation infrastructure already purchased by the government.”
ASG Dharmawardena, who appeared along with Senior State Counsel Sabrina Ahmed, informed the bench comprising Judges M.T. Laffar and P. Kumaratnam that the NPC’s observations would be submitted to the Cabinet. Having considered the matter, the court lifted its interim order preventing the purchase of the e-passports and postponed the case till January 23.
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