THE management and production of digital national IDs will be transferred to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said.
NEDA secretary Arsenio Balisacan on Wednesday, Aug. 23, said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is “closely monitoring” the distribution of both the ePhilID (electronic Philippine ID) and physical national IDs.
The ePhilID is a printed digital ID with security features. This has served as a temporary national ID pending the issuance of the physical one.
At present, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) manages the distribution of both physical and digital IDs.
“There’s now an agreement between the Philippine Statistics Authority and the DICT to transfer the provision of digital IDs to DICT, while PSA will continue with its physical ID production and distribution,” Balisacan told Palace reporters.
“I think, we are more than halfway in the physical ID but I said we want to speed up the digital ID so that, sana before the end of the year kumpleto na lahat, everyone will have a digital ID,” he added.
Press briefer Daphne Oseña-Paez, for her part, said the DICT is standardizing “all the information that’s coming in being gathered by the different agencies and from the national ID process.”
“Because all the agencies are going to be using this digital ID system and that’s also what the President wants – it’s centralized and it’s available to all agencies,” she added.
As of June 16, 2023, a total of 33,422,502 physical IDs have been delivered, while 36,848,828 digital IDs — both printed and downloadable — have been issued, PSA said. (ABS-CBN News)
