With registration of over 85 percent of the country's adult population using both bio-metric and facial recognition systems, Pakistan is way ahead of United States and India who are in a very premature stage of unique identity systems.
This was stated by National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) Deputy Chairman Tariq Malik. In his keynote address at the eight Annual Smart Cards Government Conference at Washington DC, Tariq Malik said: "Pakistan takes pride in establishing the world largest biometric citizen database, thus enabling elected government to use identity infrastructure to roll out financial support and other programmes for benefit of its citizens."
The evolution of e-government, the outreach to poorest of poor, effective information and physical security, crises management and many facets of the lives of citizens depended on Nadra's ability to assert Pakistani identity in an efficient, safe and widely accepted manner, he informed the jam-packed Identity Management gurus who came over from all across the world.
Malik announced that Nadra was going to leverage its technology and data infrastructure to leap forward and introduce smart card technology next year. The pilot project, targeting oversees Pakistanis, would use secure smart card in conjunction with biometrics, he said, adding the fingerprint template could be stored on the card for quick authentication ensuring security and quick immigration at Pakistani airports.
He boasted that Pakistan was way ahead of US and India, who were in a very premature stage of unique identity. The government provided immediate relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction cost of approximately Rs 10 billion using smart cards in a very transparent way to more than 329,000 families. This was recognised by the Economist (issue August 22). Perhaps this strategy has lessons for US crises managers, who are still struggling with the aftershocks of various crises like New Orleans and Katrina storm.-PR
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