Indonesian Government to roll out 4m employee IDs

26 January 2006

The National Civil Service Agency of Indonesia (NCSA) is to roll out a new electronic ID card system for four million government employees over the next three years.

Part of the US$20 million dollar contract to design, supply, implement and maintain the Civil Service Electronic Identification Card (E-ID Card) has been won by IRIS Corporation Berhad (ICB). ICB’s partners in this project are the main contractor – Superintending Company of Indonesia (Sucofindo) – and Data Aksara Matra (DAM).

NCSA plans to re-register all four million government employees into the system. The E-ID card is a multi-application smart card incorporating fingerprint verification that will be used to identify government employees. The E-ID card system is also designed for integration of health insurance, government housing subsidies, pension funds, e-wallet and debit payment services.

Sucofindo takes charge of project management and will be the interface with the Indonesian government and other relevant institutions, such as Indonesian finance houses. ICB, together with DAM, will be responsible for the design, supply, implementation and maintenance of the entire E-ID card solution. This includes the chip-based E-ID cards, the terminals and readers for the smart cards, and the systems for enrolment and issuance, card production, key management and SAM generation, card management, applications management, terminal management and automatic fingerprint identification.

According to a statement by ICB, the three-way partnership has been commissioned to run the project on a Build Operate Transfer (BOT) model for a concession period of 10 years. This US$20 million project will be funded by a financial institution and the loan shall be recovered from revenue generated from the E-ID Card system during the concession period.

This is the latest in a number of deals for ICB. The company is the sole manufacturer of the Malaysian Government’s MyKad. It is also the supplier of contactless integrated circuits to the Malaysian Government for use in its electronic passport. The company also supplies E-ID cards and ePassports to Thailand, and within the last week announced a US$25 million deal to supply and operate ePassport and E-ID systems in Somalia.