Service Delivery and Electronic Identification (eID) - Session 2

Notes from the World Bank workshop on “Service Delivery and Electronic Identification (eID)” in Washington.

In this session, the audience consists of World Bank members - contrary to LDCs in the former session.

For further and reading about planned future events of the eDevelopment group of World Bank I may suggest eDevelopment blog edited by Oleg Petrov.

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Opening Remarks:

Ernesto May, Sector Director, SASPF

To make ICTs for government transformation work, the public services specialists in the World Bank have to work with the ICT specialists - we have to take an integrated approach

It’s great that all these countries share their experiences with each other

We are very fortunate to hear from the practitioners & experts

eID is a critical component of a e-government initiative - so I hope these sessions provide us with experince which we can apply later

Laurent Besancon, Senior ICT Policy Specialist, Global ICT Department, World
Bank

Connecting government practitioners with each others - some planning this process, some who have already undergone it - to provide them with tools

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Panel Discussion: Lessons from International Experience

Overview of international experience and key lessons learned: Bill Nagel, Analyst, Forrester Research

Pakistan Case Study: Ali Arshad Hakeem, Chairman, NADRA, Keynote Presentation

Same presentations as in Service Delivery and Electronic Identification (eID) - Session 1 - Opening session & Panel discussion 1

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Commentary: Ed Campos, Advisor, Governance, World Bank Institute

Last years: rapid development in ICT

Philippines:

• problem with textbooks - were distributed in the beginning of the year, but only 20% reached the pupils
• scheme of the ministry: involved cell phone - they partnered with the boy scouts, gave them cellphones, sent them a list of textbooks and required the recipients to verify the list vs. the textbooks which came there
• that solved the problem

ICT is not the solution for everything - it’s strategic instrument

One of the biggest problems in Bangladesh - informal money exchange, not traceable

• introducing ways to transfer in another way made the money transfer visible

Problems emerged in the last two years

• there were two million ghost voters in the list
• with an eID system you could tackle this problem - but still difficult

ICTs have to be used in a very strategic way - but can be very simple

Q & A

Q: How to manage confidentiality & identity fraud? What is the cost per client per card?

Q: How was the political will to start the eID organization in Pakistan?

Martin Schmitt: Contracting IT services - is there a best case scenario?

Q: 90% of the Pakistani population have mobile phones - what about moving to SIM cards concerning eIDs?

Q: How is this maintained, what is your business model? How successful are you in getting funding in the commercial sector?

Mr. Hakeem

• Cost? Lately we do commercial pricing - e.g. 1100 rupees
• Fraud? It’s a major problem - with 70 Mio people in the database; some parents “created” children they never had to sell their identity later
• We need to have a critical mass having an eID, then everything will work
• Mobile phones? We don’t have 70 Mio mobile phones, we sold 70 Mio SIMs - we considered it but it takes a little longer to develop - also a lot of people require a copy of the card, it’s the culture; eventually in 5-6 years mobile phones will emerge
• What about the business model? All employees know how to use a computer; we are heavily state funded, but next year we will have a profit of 100 Mio$ - the business possibilities are huge
• What is the deal which prevents you from doing “nasty” things? There is no contract - it’s a government body which has been given a function; we can contract everything out - except our core competency of identifying the citizens

Mr. Nagel

• PKI infrastructure being expensive? Still expensive, there exist cheaper optione but they are not as secure

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Belgium Case study: Frank Leyman, Manager International Relations, FEDICT, Belgium

Estonia Case Study: Arvo Ott, Chairman, e-Governance Academy, Estonia and Tarvi Martens, Development Director, SK - Estonian ID Agency

Same presentations as in Service Delivery and Electronic Identification (eID) - Session 1 - Panel discussion 2 & Closing panel

Nick Manning

eIDs are an opportunity for easier access to public services for many citizens

the demand for development in this area is very high currently - and much of the work is not glamurous

• maintaining a database
• get applications up and running
• advertising

lessons are everywhere - in every country there’s lessons to learn, whatever developed, whatever big or small

it’s substantial not to reinvent the wheel

lessons for the bank

• we are a knowledge broker
• we should share knowledge
• we shoud bring together practitioners
• we shoud take a look how to carry out our projects according to the lessons learned today

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Q & A

Q: What’s your sense that going mobile would be one way where eID could be used in developing countries to include them?

Q: Belgian system relies on people having computers - how about countries where people have no computers? Where is the data saved?

Q: Can you think of using the eID card for

Mr. Leyman

• eID in mobile environment? you should see eID also as an identification credential, not only as a smart card
• Relying on computers? in Belgium the eID is still mostly used in a convential way - putting it out of the pocket and show it to a policeman; in LDCs they could use kiosks - touchscreens with pictograms;
• Where is the data? everything is done online - all the data is in the database in the ministries - but there are many countries where all the information is stored on the card
• Prices of readers? When we launched eID - 30€; then we went to the industry to ask them for how to put down the price -> the ministry bought 300 000 readers, the price went down 50%; we do a lot with the industry sector

Mr. Ott & Mr. Martens

• PCs necessary? No, it’s possible to have access points
• Where is the information? It’s in a database - and everybody should know how other people are using their data
• Mobile opportunities? It depends what you need - eIDs are not expensive, a lot of cost is about the issuance, the chip is very cheap - it’s more about getting people to the office; mobile has advantages, it’s easier to roll out; you have to be careful with that - issuance of the mobile phone is a crucial issue

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Closing Panel: “How to Move Forward on Mainstreaming Electronic Identification in Bank Operations?

Samia Melhem

We talked about many examples in many countries and learned a lot

Private-Public partnerships are essential

We can extend the model to more indegenous contexts

A lot of work is not glamurous, it requires process, propositions and leadership

For us at the World Bank we want to make sure to talk all together and offer the country a good solution

the e-government, e-procurement, … is all based on demand, there’s a hunger for this topic

Oleg Petrov

Thanks to our partners

Tags: #eid09, eID, electronic id, event, service delivery, world bank

Service Delivery and Electronic Identification (eID) - Session 2 was published on May 7th, 2009 by Florian Sturm.
It files under global.

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