Jamaica begins rolling out national ID

Jamaica symbolized its adoption of a digital national ID system in a ceremony with the country’s prime minister.

Chairman of the National Identification Registration Authority (NIRA) bishop Conrad Pitkin handed over a national identification card to prime minister Dr. Andrew Holness, at the official launch of the NIRA at the Central Sorting Office in Kingston.

“The NIDS provides the basis on which we can now claim to be a digital society,” Holness said during the event, as reported by the country’s news service. “We have several identification documents, we have passports, electoral IDs and we have our driver’s license; but none of them have the level of security that this card has.”

The national ID comes with certain benefits since it has an digital identity verification feature, which the prime minister highlighted. For those opening bank accounts, for example, the card has the ability to verify identity on the spot, eliminating the need to present two or more forms of identification.

The NIDS pilot project starts with 300 Jamaicans who began receiving their cards on Monday. Pitkin said that from January onward the initiative will open to the public, with biometric enrollment centers across Jamaica as well as mobile units to serve those in rural areas.

While there has been some delay in rolling out NIDS in the island nation, government ministers earlier this year pointed to the issue of trust and overcoming Jamaicans’ wariness surrounding the national ID.

“This is a very big kind of digital project for Jamaica,” Senator Dr. Dana Morris Dixion, minister without portfolio in the office of the prime minister who oversees Skills and Digital Transformation, said in April. “We know that we are in a low trust environment in our country,” she continued.

“And we also know that there are many Jamaicans who may be afraid of this digital change or even having this kind of national ID. So it is very important that through the regulations that govern everything that we do, that the security element is very strong.”

Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital identity  |  identity management  |  Jamaica  |  national ID  |  National Identification System (NIDS)  |  NIRA Jamaica