National ID system fixed after glitch

MANILA, Philippines — Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Chua assured the public of system improvements on the online registration for the national ID following the technical glitch in its pilot run.

He apologized for the technical issues that marred the pilot launch of online registration for the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) last April 30.

“There is no excuse for what happened. I take full responsibility. The main reason for piloting the website on April 30 is to learn, and we learned a lot,” Chua said in a television interview yesterday.

Chua, who chairs the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) that spearheads the national ID implementation, explained that the system was tested for 16,000 simultaneous users per minute with an ability to scale up to 35,000 users per minute.

However, the system saw 46,000 users in the first minute alone, causing the technical difficulties.

“In other words, our capacity was not enough. What we do right now is to review our system so we can increase the load. The problem is really the demand, it’s like when you open a new theme park or restaurant. Although you are ready for the peak during holidays or weekends, sometimes on the first day, everyone just wants to participate and we thank them but we are also very sorry for what happened,” Chua pointed out.

He assured the public that PSA is fixing the problem and will soon re-launch the website.

Although the national ID online portal is still running, only a few can actually enter and complete the process. During the launch on April 30, some 2,000 registrants successfully went through the system.

“It’s still open but it cannot serve tens and tens of thousands. We are hoping that in the coming days, we can get back and serve more,” Chua said.

Prior to the online registration, 33.3 million Filipinos have completed the first step of registration for the national ID system. These Filipinos have limited or no access to the internet and the process was conducted house-to-house. Of the number, 6.4 million have advanced to the second step to have their biometric information captured at designated registration centers.

PhilSys aims to provide Filipinos easier access to financial, social protection, health, education and other government services. It will also establish a single national ID system for Filipino citizens and resident aliens.

Apart from financial inclusion, priority uses for the national ID include COVID-19 vaccine distribution and for social protection subsidies.

At least 70 million Filipinos are expected to be registered by the end of the year and 92 million by end of 2022. About 80 percent of low-income registrants have no bank account and are having a hard time accessing bank services because of the lack of IDs.

By May, issuance and delivery of national ID cards for those who finished steps one and two will begin.