Digital natl ID eyed after delay in printing

The Department of Information and Communications Technology announced Wednesday that Ferdinand Marcos Jr., President of the Philippines, expressed his frustration with the delays in printing and distributing national ID cards.

“So many delays have occurred and many of the citizens of this country have been complaining about not receiving their national ID up until now. “The President is impatient because there are many things that need to be done and they all depend on the deployments of a National ID,” Communications Technology secretary Ivan John Uy stated during a Palace briefing.

He also said that DICT is currently working on the digital version of the Philippine Identification System Card (PhilSys), due to be distributed in December.

Uy explained: “DICT has prepared a study as well as a plan for the deployment of a national digital identity, which is a system that you can load on your mobile phones.”

He said that the President had not issued any ultimatums, but instead proposed the idea of alternative digital ID.

“There’s not an ultimatum.” We set the goal. We only got access to the database a few months or weeks ago. We have a somewhat ambitious goal because we only got access to the database in July last year. So we hope that we can deploy national IDs by the end of this year,” Uy said.

In August, Arsenio Balisacan, the Secretary of Socioeconomic Planning announced that the DICT was responsible for the production of e-PhilIDs.

Uy explained that the DICT will be working “parallel”, while the Philippine Statistics Authority works on producing the physical ID.

He refused to specify a date for distribution of physical IDs.