MOSIP partnership with Ethiopia on foundational digital ID expands, along with ecosystem

The partnership between Ethiopia’s National ID Program (NIDP) and MOSIP has been extended with a memorandum of understanding to enable extensive field testing and a pilot rollout with a goal of 100,000 biometric registrations to the digital ID system.

Under the MoU MOSIP will support the assessment of the Ethiopian ID solution and its potential to improve the efficiency, transparency, and targeted delivery of public services. To that end, crucial use cases will be implemented, according to the announcement.

The next phase of the partnership will focus on integration testing with external systems, field testing for Ethiopia’s authentication frameworks, and reference implementations for digital ID use cases. Overall operational testing will also be conducted during a planned progressive rollout.

“We have been working on the MOSIP platform for more than one-and-a-half years and customising it to the Ethiopian context,” explains NIDP Executive Director Yodahe A. Zemichael. “We re-named this ID Management platform Fayda (id.et/idservices). We believe that it is a digital public good, allowing true technology ownership for National Identification, which is a critical infrastructure element. We hope our partnership with MOSIP will be bi-directional, where NIDP also enriches MOSIP’s platform and its global base. We appreciate the close support provided by IIIT-B and the MOSIP team during this time and we look forward to more.”

“We are encouraged by the systematic vision of the NIDP towards establishing digital ID as a fundamental building block for governance,” comments MOSIP President Professor Rajagopalan on behalf of the organization and IIIT-Bangalore. “Ethiopia can lead by example for the rest of Africa and the world on how to establish a secure, privacy-preserving, and inter-operable digital ID system. We look forward to continued progress on this critical project and will extend all the support required to see it to fruition.”

An earlier NIDP pilot tested Tech5’s MOSIP-integrated biometric technology.

Platform updated

A new version of the MOSIP platform has also been developed, and dubbed ‘Asymmetric Amoeba,’ as announced on LinkedIn by MOSIP CTO Ramesh Narayanan.

The version 1.2.0 release comes with a support horizon of five years, and includes tooling, functionality and performance fixes, along with security updates and further additions and enhancements.

Narayanan presents the release as a major milestone marking the realization of MOSIP’s first set of goals for building an open-source foundational digital ID ecosystem. He also teases further announcements in the weeks ahead.

Private-sector partners join in

A system integrator in an Asian country adopting MOSIP has selected fingerprint biometric authentication scanners from Hangzhou-based Miaxis Biometrics, meanwhile.

The SM-91M FAP20 optical biometric scanners, which feature FIPS 140-2 level 3 secure processors and Foundational Trust Module capabilities, are compliant with MOSIP SBI2.0, and have been integrated by India’s NPrime Technologies.

The announcement notes the adoption of MOSIP for the Philippines PhilSys digital ID system.

Mantra Softech has performed the self-assessment process for compliance with MOSIP’s Secure Biometric Interface (SBI) Specifications 1.0 and 2.0 for several of its sensor products.

The self-assessment was carried out for Mantra’s MORPHS, MATIS X, and MFS500 LX biometric sensors, according to the company announcement. Mantra says their compliance to MOSIP’s specifications addresses major issues associated with biometrics acquisition.

“At Mantra Softech, our focus has always been to provide innovative products and cost-effective solutions,” states Mantra Softech Spokesperson Hiren Bhandari. “The MOSIP compliance program gives us an opportunity to push the envelope of our pioneering biometric devices. The open-source foundational ID platform, MOSIP, and our interoperable systems will streamline together to incorporate it seamlessly.”

“Our aim, through this partner program, is to facilitate high quality plug and play technology solutions for our adopters to choose from,” comments MOSIP Biometric Ecosystem Head Sanjith Sundaram. “We welcome Mantra’s active participation in the biometric ecosystem and the compliance programs”

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  Ethiopia  |  Ethiopia National ID Program (NIDP)  |  Fayda  |  interoperability  |  Mantra Softech  |  Miaxis Biometrics  |  MOSIP (Modular Open Source Identity Platform)  |  national ID  |  open source  |  Secure Biometric Interface (SBI)