Indonesia plans ABIS upgrade to combine legacy biometrics systems

Indonesian authorities are engaging with biometrics providers in a market sounding initiative ahead of a planned procurement of a new automated biometric identification system (ABIS).

The Directorate General for Population and Civil Registration (Ditjen Dukcapil) and Ministry of Home Affairs are working together on the project to strengthen Indonesia’s civil registration system and increase the use of digital identity among its people. Greater adoption of digital ID will improve the delivery of and access to services from the public and private sector, according to the announcement.

The market sounding will set up the development of the government’s procurement and implementation strategies for the new biometrics system.

The World Bank is providing funding for the “ID Project for Inclusive Service Delivery and Digital Transformation in Indonesia Project.” That project also includes the biometric enrollment and ID card printer tenders launched earlier this year. The revised procurement plan published by the World Bank in July refer to a $12 million backup ABIS contract with a bid evaluation and recommendation target of December 31, 2025 and a completion target of April 2, 2027.

The new system will upgrade the two ABISs currently used by Dukcapil – one for storage of more than 200 million biometric records, the other one for ongoing enrollment and biometric deduplication. Both will be combined into a single system to serve the country’s population of 280 million.

The latter ABIS is provided by Totm through its Indonesian subsidiary InterBIO.

In the current setup, iris biometrics and fingerprints are used for deduplication, with identity verification through dedicated platforms but mostly relying on face biometrics. The new system will continue to use iris and fingerprints for deduplication, with face biometrics “treated as an optional or complimentary modality depending on operational requirements.”

The change is intended to ensure universal inclusion of Indonesians in the country’s civil registry and ID system and ensure the system is sustainable, operationally and financially, and interoperable. Dukcapil also wants to avoid vendor lock-in and improve its scalability and resilience.

The agency also wants to make sure the new ABIS will work with the new identity verification and digital KYC platform currently in development.

A blog post (restricted to Indonesian IP addresses) from Dukcapil invites interested biometrics providers to submit Letters of Interest so it can gather “detailed technical input from qualified industry actors” by Tuesday, December 23, 2025.

To qualify, biometrics providers should have experience with national scale systems serving 10 million people or more, and have rights to the technologies they propose, whether as the technology owner or a partner.

 

Article Topics

ABIS  |  biometrics  |  civil registration  |  digital ID  |  Dukcapil  |  Indonesia  |  procurement  |  tender  |  World Bank