The Department of Information and Communications Technology said that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. expressed his frustration at the delays in the printing and distribution of the national ID cards.
There have been many delays and some of our fellow citizens are complaining about not receiving their IDs. The President expressed his frustration because many things were needed, but it all depended on the implementation of a National ID.
The DICT, he said, is currently working on the digital version of the Philippine Identification System card (PhilSys), which will be distributed by the end of this year.
Uy stated, “The DICT has done a research and developed a plan on how to implement a national digital identity. It is an ID system that you can load onto your phones.”
He stated that President Obama did not give an ultimatum and instead proposed the idea of a new digital ID.
There’s absolutely no need for an ultimatum. Our goal was set by us. The database was only opened to us a couple of months or a month ago. “Our goal is a bit ambitious, because we only got access to the database in July. By year’s end, we would like to be able deploy national IDs,” Uy explained.
In August, Arsenio Balisacan, the Secretary of Socioeconomic Planing announced that DICT will be responsible for the production of e-PhilIDs.
Uy explained that the DICT will be working “parallel”, while the Philippine Statistics Authority works on producing the physical ID.
He declined to provide a specific date for distribution of physical IDs.