Govt sets aside initial fund for proposed national ID

By Darwin G. Amojelar, Manila Times Reporter

THE Arroyo administration plans to spend hundreds of millions of pesos for the procurement of computers and other equipment required for the implementation of the unified multipurpose-identification (ID) system.

In a report to President Arroyo, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Augusto B. Santos said arrangements have been made for an initial allocation of P200 million under the e-Government Fund for the procurement of a large-capacity computer server to host the Common Reference Number (CRN) registry and the required software to operate the central database.

A CRN is a unique number generated and assigned to a person, which will be his unique identifier for the rest of his life.

Santos said the National Statistics Office (NSO) has already completed the development of the appropriate algorithm to generate the CRNs.

The NSO is in the process of validating the birth records of Government Service Insurance System members, numbering some 1.3 million, for assignment of their individual CRNs before said records will undergo “cleansing” through biometrics data matching. GSIS members will be the first group to be assigned the CRNs.

Danny Pabellon, NEDA director for Information Techno-logy Coordination Staff said the government is conducting a feasibility study for the procurement of the automated fingerprint information system (AFIS).

He said the AFIS that will be used for the project is similar to that used by the Social Security System, and would cost over a billion of pesos. The feasibility study is scheduled for completion by December. “We hope to fully implement the ID system, which will cover at least 37.1 million Filipinos, who are holders of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., by the end of next year,” Pabellon said.
Under Executive Order 420, or the Unified Multipurpose ID System, all Filipinos transacting with the government will be issued CRNs.

The unified ID system aims to reduce the cost of government-issued IDs, and to fast-track official transactions.
Carmelita Ericta, NSO administrator, said the unified multipurpose IDs will contain three kinds of data—basic, biometric and other information.

Basic data comprise the name, date and place of birth, name of parents and sex of the bearer. Biometric data consist of the photograph, signature and prints of the index fingers and thumbs. Other data pertain to home address, marital status, height, weight, prominent distinguishing features and the Tax Identification Number