Philippines issues $22M tender for national ID program management consultant

The Philippines Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Center is requesting Expressions of Interest (EOIs) from eligible consulting firms from Asian Development Bank member countries as it seeks Transaction Advisory Services for the Philippines Digital National Identity Project.

The government is looking to upgrade its national ID and the infrastructure backing it as it expands and fortifies one of its signature digital public infrastructure projects. The tender is part of an overall plan to transform the country’s fortunes with the aid of digital transformation.

The proposed Project will “effectively, easily, and seamlessly capture the identity information and biometrics of Private Persons and provide authentication of identity through multimodal authentication through a secure infrastructure,” the tender says. The Project will establish user-friendly, verifiable identity systems that advance government development objectives and enable licensed banks to extend banking and financial services across the Philippines’ largely unbanked population.

The consultant will be responsible for assisting in the preparation of documents, the evaluation of proposals and monitoring of project implementation.

The estimated project cost is Php 1.28 billion (US$22.4m) with the contract period for the project set as 15.5 years (with a half year expected for the development period). The implementing agency is the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and the private proponent is the Unisys Public Sector Services Corporation.

The tender says the the proponent may be repaid through a combination of availability payments, fees collected from private users for services such as card re-issuance, online pre-enrollment, VIP Express, and personal ID, as well as fees from private use cases including authentication, e-KYC, technical onboarding, offline authentication, and services provided by trusted service providers.

The system will be composed of the Core Identity Management Service, which includes the peripheral supporting services such as portals, Idemia-based ABIS and Registration Client, besides the core identity platform. There will also be a transition period as support from the PSA is transferred to Unisys, during which a governance framework will be established.

Modernization is part of the brief, to develop Personal ID and Offline Authentication, and migration of select “non-production components” to AWS Public cloud. A component includes the operation of Registration Centers and Card Printing.

The registration operations service will oversee the setup and management of both permanent and mobile registration centers, ensuring ongoing support for the enrollment of newborns, children aged five to 15, and individuals at age 15. It also accommodates ad hoc biometric updates when an individual’s biometrics need updating. The service is designed to handle targeted data capture including demographic and biometric information, with appropriate sizing,  at approximately birth, age five, and age 15.

Once a citizen has completed biometric registration or updates, and their identity has been confirmed via deduplication and biometric matching, their ID card and accompanying letter are expected to be generated at the registration center, whether fixed or mobile, typically within ten minutes. For registrations carried out through an IRC, an ePhilID is issued within a similar timeframe after successful validation by the PhilSys system. The final ID card is then produced at the corresponding FRC, and within seven days, the IRC returns to distribute the cards on-site. If further verification is needed, citizens can choose to either collect their card at a later date or have it delivered via courier, which is expected to apply to roughly five percent of cases.

The PPP Center is looking for consulting firms who can help manage and shepherd the project, nominate experts with experience in the technicalities of such projects including legal, managerial and engineering, and who can understand the complexities of critical services in an end-to-end manner.

The maximum budget for the consulting assignment is Php 22,283,000 ($391,066), sourced from the PPP Center’s Project Development and Monitoring Facility. Full details on the request for expression of interest, including submission details, can be found here.

Physical national ID cards will continue to be printed

The Philippines’ president Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. reaffirmed that the government will continue issuing physical national ID cards, even as it advances digital initiatives. Speaking at the launch of the eGovPH Super app and the eGovPH Serbisyo Hub in San Juan City, he emphasized that certain sectors still prefer physical IDs, which the administration will accommodate.

Marcos highlighted the utility of the digital national ID within the eGovPH Super app, which streamlines access to a variety of government services and transactions. He noted that 88 million Filipinos have already received their digital IDs, underscoring their convenience.

According to the PSA, out of more than 112 million Filipinos, more than 93 million have registered for the national ID, with nearly 55 million physical ID cards delivered as of June 6.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  digital ID  |  digital public infrastructure  |  government purchasing  |  identity management  |  Philippines  |  Philippines Statistics Authority  |  public-private partnerships  |  tender  |  Unisys