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THE Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) targets to enroll 25 million Filipinos every year in the National Identification System as it plans to begin the mass rollout next year.

Dr. Lisa Grace Bersales, national statistician and civil registrar general, on Wednesday said there would be a pilot launch in the last quarter with around a million beneficiaries of the government’s Unconditional Cash Transfer and another 1.6 million next year along with senior citizens, people with disabilities, and indigenous people.

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She said PSA plans to enroll in the system the entire population in three to five years.

Bersales said the members of the Philsystem Policy and Coordination Council (PSPCC) would convene on Wednesday to discuss the timeline of the implementation and the draft implementing rules and regulations (IRR), which will be finalized in two months.

A budget of at least P1.4 billion has been allocated for the procurement of the ICT system that utilizes “advance technology to ensure confidentiality and security of our database” but the indicative budget for the three to five-year implementation would be P30 billion.

She said they would tap Philpost for the initial implementation of the ID system this year.

Bersales said they would also have a third party who would do the private impact assessment of the National ID System “to assure everyone that PSA has already instituted proper rules, guidelines, both technical and processes to ensure privacy of our citizens and those that are in the database.”

She explained that Philsys would only “answer who are you and who you really say you are” to provide identity to citizens and resident aliens in the Philippines and to authenticate their identity during transactions.

She said the Philsys database would be autonomous from other government agencies.

The PSA would announce soon the schedule of the registration centers across the country.

“The basic document that the citizens will bring to the registration centers is birth certificate. We will accept birth certificate issued anytime in the past,” she said.

Bersales said senior citizens who would go the registration center without a birth certificate would still be enrolled. “But we will use different processes to address certain situations,” she added.

She said the first ID card would be free.

Under the system, she said a unique national ID number would be assigned to every individual and even for infants upon birth but a biometrics would be taken once they reach the age of majority.

Bersales said the council has yet to decide whether it would be 15 or 18 years old. (Antonio Colina iv of Mindanews)

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