THE Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) is confident that it could meet the year-end target of 30.1 million printed national identification (ID) cards and the 19.9 million digital ID cards which are printable, Press Secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles said on Wednesday.
Angeles said that as of August 23, the PSA has transferred to the Philippine Postal Corporation (PhilPost) some 17.6 million physical National ID cards for delivery to the residences of ID applicants.
The PSA is an attached agency of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), which is headed by Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.
“PSA is making considerable progress to hit the end-year target of 30.1 million physical Phil ID cards, which is 58 percent of the over-all target,” Balisacan said.
Balisacan has reported to Malacanang that in the last 11 days, the daily average of physical cards produced at the printing facilities of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas is 103,000 per day, which is above PSA’s daily target.
“Note that the target number of IDs issued by the end year is 50 million, of which 30.1 million are physical IDs, and the balance of 19.9 million is digital/printable IDs,” Balisacan said in his report.
President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has earlier ordered the PSA to issue 30 million national IDs by the end of 2022 and reach the target goal of 92 million by the middle of next year, as he cited its vital role in digital transformation during his first State of the Nation Address (SONA) last July 25.
In his SONA, Marcos said the national ID will enable seamless transactions between citizens and national and local governments.
“The National ID will play an important part in this digital transformation. For citizens to be able to seamlessly transact with government, their identity must be verifiable. The target is to accomplish the issuance of about 92-million IDs by the middle of 2023,” the President said.
To make good use of the system, Marcos ordered the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to digitize and harmonize government databases and have their data readily shared across departments and agencies.
“(The DICT) has the daunting task of transforming our government into an agile bureaucracy that is responsive to the needs of the public, provide good and solid data to ensure informed decision making, and allow secure and seamless access to public services,” he said.
