PNG finalizes DPI policy draft, plans last digital ID consultation for July

The government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) has announced the completion of a draft policy that lays out a clear vision for the country’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) implementation.

This announcement was made this week by Steven Matainaho, Secretary and CEO of PNG’s Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), who explained that the policy ties in with the government’s Vision 2050 and the Digital Government Act 2022.

The DPI policy was unveiled at the end of last year.

The policy, Matainaho notes, is anchored on the SevisPass digital ID platform which is expected to simplify access to banking, healthcare, government services including digital voting, and social media monetization programs, while ensuring robust privacy and compliance for Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC).

He said the SevisPass which will offer “mobile enrollment and offline authentication for enhanced accessibility” has been designed with inclusion, privacy and interoperability at its core. It has disability-friendly features, data privacy-by-design and encryption system, and cross-sector integration capabilities.

Apart from the SevisPass digital ID, the DPI draft policy rests on four other major pillars, namely SevisWallet for secure credential storage, SevisPortal for self-service digital government services, SevisAminPortal which will serve as a governance and trust registry platform, and SevisDEx, a secure data exchange system.

The DICT will oversee the legal and governance framework of the policy through what the government says will be a “federated model”, with other planned legislative amendments expected to “ensure adherence to trust and compliance requirements.”

Meanwhile, Matainaho also disclosed that the last phase of consultations for the digital ID policy will begin next month, marked by a number of activities. First, there’ll be a digital ID workshop which will see the participation of banks, telecom companies and government agencies, and later a national data integration trial.

All of this will pave the way for the official launch of the national digital ID system which is projected to happen before 2025 runs out.

The DPI policy is part of the push for the realization of PNG’s five-year Digital Government Plan (2023-2027, which has so far seen pilots for digital clearance certificates and other digital services cited in a report by Business Advantage PNG.

Matainaho is quoted by the outlet as saying that they also plan to trial between 15 and 20 other services this year on the e-portal before it fully goes live. Discussions are also ongoing for a government-to-business digital platform, the integration of AI into governance and how DPI can be used to effectively power PNG’s economic growth and development ambitions.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  data exchange platform  |  digital government  |  digital ID  |  digital public infrastructure  |  national ID  |  Papua New Guinea  |  SevisDEx  |  SevisPass  |  SevisWallet