Thailand will make a historic step when the government begins issuing the first national smart ID cards at 1,077 offices this April when it will take a distributed approach to card production, a move that has been criticised by Gartner Inc., the company invited to offer advice on the mega-project. This is when the first of some 10,000 cards will be handed to the Prime Minister and issued to community leaders as well as to some citizens nationwide to test the card management system.
Shrugging off criticism, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Minister Dr Surapong Suebwonglee said that many projects conducted here had not been done elsewhere, but this did not mean that we would be wrong.
Citing the low-cost PC (Computer Ua-Arthorn) project as an example, he noted that several countries, including Malaysia and Chile, had wanted to apply the same model in their countries.
The proposed decentralised card-issuing process at 1,077 branches of the Interior Ministry's Bureau of Registration Administration (Bora) has been criticised by some academics as well as by Gartner over security and cost concerns.
Critics have warned of a greater chance of fraud when there are more card-issuing centres, and also question the cost-effectiveness when compared to centralised production.
A report by Gartner Asia Pacific Research Director Dion Wiggins stated that a government-issued national ID card should be regarded in a similar way to how we think of banknotes. Manufacturing currency in hundreds of locations could result in difficulties in securing such a large number of facilities. Commercial financial institutions such as American Express and banks that utilise Visa and Mastercards take a centralised approach to card production and personlisation since the ability to manage the overall process in a secure manner is achievable and the costs are greatly reduced.
Gartner also recommended laser-engraving technology, which it claimed would produce a longer-lasting image in high-resolution black and white at 1,600 dpi, compared with a medium- resolution colour image at 300 dpi with the Dye Diffusion Thermal Transfer (D2T2) printers.
Laser-engraved cards would be harder to forge, Gartner noted, while in cost-saving terns, the technology would not require consumables such as the ink used with D2T2 printers. Also, the lifetime of a D2T2-generated card was around five years compared to 10 years for a card using the laser technology, it said.
However, the limitation of the centralised process is that citizens could not get their multi-function ID card within 15 minutes as they could with a distributed process, although Gartner argues that card delivery by registered post would not be a problem.
However, the ICT Minister pointed out one drawback with the laser engraving technology since it required a polycarbonate card that was produced by only three manufacturers in the world.
Although one is in Thailand, it had never produced cards before, he said.
The cost of a polycarbonate card was around one US dollar (around 40 baht) while a cost of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) card used with D2T2 printers was priced at 25 US cents (about 10 baht), he added.
The difference is about 30 baht and if the cost of the PET card supplies was included Bora had indicated that the PET card would cost only 18 baht, he said. In addition, there was a wide choice of manufacturers of PET cards, he added.
"The purpose of using a smart card is to store information in a chip. Why do we have to pay more in order to make the appearance of the ID card difficult to forge, while the chip built in to either a PET card or a polycarbonate card is the same?" he asked.
The information stored in the chip would be processed by authorised officials only. They would require to scan in their fingerprint as well as to swap their ID cards before being able to access a central database and to retrieve information to be stored in someone's national smart ID card, he noted.
The chip card will be used to access government services at e-government kiosks nationwide as well as being readable by a smart card reader that the minister said would soon become another standard integrated into a PC.
He said that the information printed on the card would not be used much, except for initial identification.
The multi-function ID cards will contain personal ID, fingerprints, tax, social welfare and social security numbers, agricultural data and healthcare data.
The chip would be integrated with 64-Kbytes of memory, of which 32-KB would be reserved for future applications, and the card would support the Java OS, said Bora Director Surachai Srisaracam, adding that around seven agencies already provided data to be stored on the card.
In April, it would begin issuing the first 10,000 smart cards while the testing would continue for a couple of months, he said and the Prime Minister, provincial governors and district leaders would help promote the use of smart ID card.
The ICT Ministry expects to release a new design of smart ID card on January 28 and those who wish to send in design ideas could submit these to ministry's website (http://www.mict.co.th) before Friday.
Timeline
February 2002:
Smart national ID card project is initiated by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra with the aim of giving Thais the status of "e-citizens".
January 2003:
The Cabinet approves the Interior Ministry's project to computerize the registration system of the Bureau of Registration Administration (Bora) at 1,077 offices.
July 2003:
The Cabinet selects Bora to oversee the smart card project.
August 2003:
Bora awards the six-year, 1.8 billion baht project to the Control Data Group to implement an online registration system.
October 2003:
The Cabinet transfers the smart ID card project to the ICT Ministry; Gartner asked to conduct workshop about smart ID cards, in which it criticises the speed and proposed distributed approach to card production.
December 2003:
Deputy Prime Minister Gen Chavalit Yongchaiyudh announces that smart ID cards cards will be ready in April 2004.
Quelle: Bangkok Post, 21.01.2004
