Kenya’s ICT secretary, Joe Mucheru announced that the country will conduct a fresh registration of persons that is meant to populate the upcoming National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS). The system will hold all personal information of Kenyans and registered foreigners.
“We want to make sure that from cradle one has a unique ID and is able to access all government services since one can be identified,” said the cabinet secretary.
The new system will ensure that all identification documents associated with the government such as IDs, driving licenses, passports, KRA PIN, birth and death certificates are issued from a central source. Other documentation to be managed by the system under the proposed amendments are foreigner certificates, work permits, foreign travel documentation and student identification cards.
To bring to life the National Integrated Identity Management System, the government will need to do a fresh registration of all persons, taking into account not only their names, fingerprints and physical location but unique attributes of a person such as hand and earlobe geometry, retina and iris patterns and voice waves.
The system will also require registrants to provide detailed location information such as land reference number, plot number or house number, details that will be used to generate GPS coordinates of the person’s location.
“It is critical that we have one approach as government where we have a single source of truth, a central reference for the registration information and data about our citizens. It will be one database for all Kenyans and not only over 18 but it’s everybody. This will help us to deliver services to our citizens in a very efficient way,” said Mucheru.
The registration exercise is set to kick-off between October and November this year and The Standard reports that Assistant Chiefs will be used as registration officers during the exercise.
