Ukraine to launch digital ID as Malaysia reveals open source approach to national biometric system

The Cabinet of Ukraine has launched a pilot project as it seeks to stand up a national digital ID system for online identity verification, according to the Kyiv Post.

Over the next six months, the technical conditions and security of the pilot system and the reliability of existing registers will be evaluated.

In addition to authentication for digital services, digital IDs will allow the government to detect and eliminate identity data duplication and the cloning of user accounts, the report says. The government also plans to leverage the verified data to hold a population census across the country, and eventually simplify social benefit eligibility and payment processes.

Ukraine issued more than 3 million biometric passports last year, after upgrading to the modern credential in 2015.

Malaysia choses open source

The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) is planning to use the country’s biometric digital identity system to make 40 percent of government services available online “end-to-end” by the close of 2020, GovInsider reports. To shift the government to a more agile service delivery system, MAMPU is leveraging open source technologies, rather than exclusively relying on the proprietary systems of vendors, according to the report.

“Open source has helped us enable more agile processes and further develop the capabilities of the Public Sector Office while ensuring effective use of our resources,” says Deputy Director General for Information and Communication Technology Dr. Suhazimah Dzazali.

The previous use of licensed technology, which could only be adapted with further costs, hindered the growth of hosted applications, and made developing them more expensive.

“Previously, we used resources provided by our data centre and built our applications on traditional virtual machines. But our growth was constrained by funding availability and a lack of staff with Linux, middleware, and cloud skills,” says Application Development Division Deputy Director Hanissull Jalis bt Md Yusof.

The digital ID initiative was announced in August to benefit both government and private sector transactions. The system will enable transactions without the use of a username, password, or physical tokens, from any device and anywhere in the world for any government service.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital identity  |  government services  |  identity verification  |  Malaysia  |  online authentication  |  Ukraine