Namibia Identity Management : System Analysis
Namibia should be congratulated on their forward looking and energetic public sector because of the strategic vision of the leadership, as could be observed in the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration (MHAI). MHAI is responsible for the technic...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/06/26522697/identity-management-system-namibia-analysis-report http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24753 |
| Summary: | Namibia should be congratulated on their
forward looking and energetic public sector because of the
strategic vision of the leadership, as could be observed in
the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration (MHAI). MHAI is
responsible for the technical and organizational
infrastructureused to define, design, and administer the
identity management system in Namibia.And from what could be
observed there are systems and procedures in place to
administer the registration of births and deaths and the
linkage with the Namibian identification card. A
complicating factor is the continued use of South West
African (SWA) identity cards and the legacy register these
represent. The fact that these have yet to be phased out
represents both an administrative challenge which can delay
identity verification processes, but also a security risk in
that the issuance of the cards were based on standards that
are different from today’s requirements for strong
verification and authentication practices. The digital
connectivity is a prerequisite for the interoperability of
databases for the purpose of efficient deployment and use of
electronic identification cards, and as such is a
cornerstone of an identity management system. Namibia
appears to be in a transitional phase with respect to
putting in place the infrastructure needed for making their
electronic governance vision a reality.Introducing an e-ID
card has the potential to increase the effectiveness of both
the public and the private sectors, and improve service
delivery to citizens and residents alike. The proposal to
Namibia is to consider a multi-stepapproach to
identification cards by phasing out the SWA and the current
national identity card, while phasing in an electronic
identification card.A number of policy decisions are
necessary to establish a legal, institutional and technical
basis for a digitally integrated identity management system
for Namibia. Namibia has already advanced with respect to
defining thefoundations for linking services and systems, as
well as thinking ahead with respect to the development and
implementation of the same. |
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