KINGSTON, Jamaica— Last year’s Supreme Court decision to bar plans by the government to make the national identification system (NIDS) compulsory may have delayed the process, but it has not affected the government efforts to find an alternative en route to a modern identification system.

The Joint Select Committee (JSC) of Parliament, which has been given the task of reviewing the substitute Bill, the National Identification and Registration Act 2020, which was tabled in Parliament by Prime Minister Andrew Holness in December, learnt yesterday the NIDS Policy and Technical Team has not lost focus and will start virtual town hall meetings next week Wednesday.

They actually stayed together after the Supreme Court setback, and have continued work on the policy areas for digitalisation which were not affected by the court’s decision.

“From day one, we would have said that the NIDS Programme was not just for NIDS, but there are a lot of systems within government that needed to be upgraded,” NIDS Project Director in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), Warren Vernon, told a meeting of the JSC reviewing the new Bill.

He said that starting with the Public/Private Initiatives (PPIs), they have worked on the development of electronic passports (e-passports), as part of the transformation process taking place at the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA).

At the same time hardware for the Public/Private Key infrastructure (PKI) has also been acquired for the project which was rolled out in January 2020, with the objective of making Jamaica a more digital society with ubiquitous use of information and communications technology (ICT) in all spheres, including home, work, school and recreation.

It also formed part of the Government’s National Identification System (NIDS), and will enable trusted electronic identities for people, services and things, and make it possible to implement strong authentication, data encryption and digital signatures, based on a certifying authority.

In fact, Vernon said that team is set to complete the PKI infrastructure by March, which will allow the public to go online and request a copy of their birth certificate in digital form, which can be used anywhere in the world that can verify the security framework.

“It is important for us to prepare the government for the adaption of the NIDS,” Vernon told the meeting, while basically responding to questions from Opposition members Julian Robinson and Peter Bunting.

He said that the team is currently working with a number of other government entities, including the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information to get them ready for passage of the new Bill.

“When you look at the business processes, you start to think about digital first: How can we eliminate the bureaucratic processes,  to transfer into a digital highway. We have all that going on in the background, while we await the adaption of the Bill,” Vernon added.

The committee was having its second meeting since the tabling of the Bill, the first being a brief meeting following the Senate’s final meeting before the pre-Christmas break on December 18, at which the chairman, Justice Minister Delroy Chuck offered to bring in the NIDS Team from the OPM to respond to any queries from the new committee.

Chuck explained that the six meetings will take place over the final three weeks in January. He said that if there was a need for the committee to have further consultations with the OPM team before they start, then another meeting would have to be scheduled for this week.

The team’s Public Relations spokesman, Richard Delapenha, said that the six meetings will be held on January 13, 14, 20, 21, 27 and 28, which would mean two each week until the end of January. The meetings will include introduction to the Bill, discussions on the clauses and feedbacks. They will each last from 7.30 pm to 9:00 pm, and will be carried live on available video services, as well as on local radio stations.

Chuck said that the committee has already sent invitations to some 100 institutions to make submissions to the secretariat at Gordon House, as well as various stakeholders to attend the virtual town hall meetings to ensure the widest possible public involvement in discussions on the new Bill.

 Balford Henry