The project teams will all be composed of government offices involved in a project called “Harmonization of Government Numbering System,” proposed last February.
ID harmonization involves integrating the content of several ID issuing government agencies to allow faster delivery of public services. The NEDA project teams will be drawn from the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), Social Security System (SSS), Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), Land Transportation Office, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Philippine National Police (PNP), and Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).
The SSS and the GSIS are two government-owned corporations that issue IDs to members. The NBI and LTO release public licenses and clearances.
CICT Chairman Virgilio Peña said in an interview that the project teams would focus on different aspects of integrating different IDs issued by each agency. But the assignments of the projects teams have yet to be identified, but he hopes the implementation of ID harmonization would begin this year.
The group is still looking at the cost of the said project, which could run in the tens of millions of pesos, he explained. By identifying the project teams and their directions, they can arrive at the funds required to pursue the project, to be sourced from the one billion-peso e-Government Fund.
But Peña qualified the announcement, saying that the number harmonization project is not the national ID system, which has received criticism from civil and privacy rights advocates.
“This project is merely to streamline the services from existing IDs. It's not for prying into private lives,” the CICT chairman stressed.
Autor: Alexander Villafania
Quelle: INQ7, 16.06.2005
