PSA apologizes for glitch on first day of Nat’l ID online registration

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on Friday apologized for the “technical difficulties” experienced by registrants on the first day of the online registration for the National ID.

“We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the downtime of the pilot launch of the PhilSys online Step 1 Registration website earlier today,” the PSA said in a statement.

The Statistics agency explained that it received more than 40,000 registration requests during the first minutes of the pilot launch.

“This caused delays in the sending of the one time passwords (OTPs) necessary to proceed with the registration,” it said.

“We are urgently looking into the issue and updating the website to resolve this technical challenge,” it added.

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

Meanwhile, Step 2 entails the capture the biometric information such as iris scan, fingerprints, and photograph at the PhilSys registration centers, the PSA official said there are about 4.6 million who completed the second stage of PhilSys.

Step 3 is the issuance of PhilSys number and the distribution of the physical ID.

“We will provide an update on our PhilSys Facebook page as soon as the website is once again operational,” the PSA said.

“Once again, we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. We thank you for your patience and support for the PhilSys program,” it added.

President Rodrigo Duterte signed the proposed national identification system into law in 2018 to harmonize and integrate several government IDs. — DVM, GMA News