Nationwide registration for nat’l ID system eyed in Jan. 2021 —PSA chief

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) is eyeing to conduct the nationwide registration for the national ID system in January 2021.

To recall, the PSA announced that Step 1 of registration for the first nine million low-income household heads will start on October 12, 2020.

Under Step 1, PSA enumerators will go house-to-house to collect the 10 demographic information - name, gender, birth place and birth date, blood type, address, citizenship, marital status, cellphone number, and email address - from the targeted registrants.

The Step 2 will begin on November 25. In this step, the PSA will capture the biometric information such as iris scan, fingerprints, and photograph at the PhilSys registration centers.

“Registration Step 3 or the issuance of PhilSys number or PSN and the Phil ID will be starting 2021 onwards,” National Statistician and National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Undersecretary Dennis Mapa said in a virtual press conference on Friday.

The PSA is targeting nine million Filipinos from low income households to complete Step 1 and out of this about five million Filipinos will complete the registration process in the fourth quarter of 2020.

“After the registration of low-income household heads, the PSA will make the registration available to the public in 2021 with help of LGUs (local government units), partner agencies and other stakeholders,” Mapa said.

The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) identified the priority provinces for the initial roll out of the national ID.

“What the PSA is planning by January 2021 we will cover all areas in the country,” Mapa said.

“By January 2021 the registration operations for the PhilSys will be nationwide,” he said.

The PSA chief said the government is targeting to complete the registration of at least 92 million individuals in the national ID system or PhilSys.

The agency earlier said that the public can choose whether or not to apply for a national ID although having one is encouraged.

Mapa, meanwhile, said the PSA will ensure the safety of registrants and registration officers through strict adherence to health protocols amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

For his part, Department of Information and Communications Technology Undersecretary Dennis Villorente said the government has adopted a “hybrid cloud solution” for the national ID system.

“We intend for PhilSys to harness the strengths of cloud technology. We have adopted a hybrid cloud solutions for our systems integrator to leverage the inherent efficiency, availability, and scalability of cloud while maintaining control and security safeguards by storing data that’s collected under PhilSys in government data centers,” Villorente said.

“This hybrid cloud solutions opens more opportunities for PhilSys to link with more government agencies, the private sector, including banks and other financial institutions and so on,” the DICT official said, noting that the PhilSys will be kept abreast of technological advances.—LDF, GMA News