Government Gets To Work Designing ID Card

Jakarta Globe, Camelia Pasandaran, January 27, 2010

Following promising tests in several major cities, the government on Wednesday established an inter-ministerial team to create the design for the single electronic ID card project, which is estimated to cost Rp 6 trillion ($642 million).

Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi said his office is now working on the design of the project, known as E-KTP, in coordination with other ministries and government bodies.

“We need to be careful with the budget because it requires around Rp 6 trillion,” he said. “[The Corruption Eradication Commission] has warned us to be careful.”

Vice President Boediono officially unveiled the team, which consists of 15 representatives from different bodies, including the Finance Ministry, the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas), Central Statistics Agency (BPS), the Communication and Information Ministry and the Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT).

The E-KTP has been long planned as part of a government initiative to give every citizen a single 16-digit identity number.

The prototype card contains 37 categories of information, including marital status, blood type, parents’ name and employment, physical or mental disabilities, birth certificate, divorce certificate, place and date of birth, biometric finger prints of all fingers and a photograph.

Most of this information will be stored electronically. The card will display a photo, name and identity number.

The central government has tested the new ID card in pilot projects in Denpasar, Makassar, Padang and Yogyakarta. The Jakarta city administration has run its own testing program.

Gamawan said early evaluation of the pilot projects was promising.

“The pilot projects shows good compatibility of technology used to exchange data from one region to other regions,” he said. “We tested whether finger prints in Bali could be read in Jakarta. It shows that the data could be opened here.”

Gamawan said the program would be expensive, but it would help the government save money in the longer term.

“One of the big applications is for the voter-registration process. We won’t need to fight about the voter list again. We can save a large amount of money,” he said.

He said the central database would be backed up in two other cities to help protect against identity theft and cyber attacks.

“We will have other places to back up the data, such as in Batam,” he said.

“As for identity stealers, we have planned a good security system that will be hard to be break.”