A handful of nations distributing new digital ID documents

Four disparate nations are in the midst of distributing various digital IDs: Vietnam, Brazil, Saint Lucia and Greece.

In Hanoi, capital of Vietnam, the public security department has begun a month of intense government action to get digital IDs into the hands of every resident who does not already have one.

Police will work from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. over the next four weeks to wrap up the drive. After December 31, conventional identification papers will be invalid, according to Vietnam+, part of the government’s Vietnam News Agency.

Brazil’s government, meanwhile, expects to begin distributing is chip-based national identity card.

According to the Tampa (Florida) Dispatch, the card has a QR code for electronic validation. It can be used as a travel document in the Mercosur region, which is the majority of South America. Not all states have scheduled distribution yet.

The leaders of Saint Lucia, a small island nation off the northeast coast of Venezuela, are working out the final details of their new digital passports with security printer Canadian Bank Note.

CBN also produces Dominica’s biometric passports.

Passport offices have been given a tech makeover to prepare for the change from machine-readable documents (on which CBN also worked). Desktops, cameras, printers and scanners have been replaced with new hardware, reports news publication The Voice.

The cost of the passport is raising concerns, however. At $250, some residents will be unable to afford the new document, according to another piece in The Voice.

Saint Lucia joins other Caribbean nations using digital IDs, including Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize Grenada and St. Kitts and Nevis.

And finally, Greece, which is expected to replace conventional ID and driving documents with mobile ID documents on phones beginning this week.

Each bearer’s full name will be displayed in Greek and Latin characters.

The program was spotlighted in January by the nation’s digital governance minister.

Article Topics

biometric passport  |  biometrics  |  Brazil  |  digital ID  |  Greece  |  identity document  |  mDL (mobile driver's license)  |  Vietnam