A December 2011 deadline has been set for the full implementation of a single identity number across Indonesia, a government official said on Friday. Although there have been initial problems in rolling out the system, Saut Situmorang, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Home Affairs, said the government was confident it would meet the deadline for the new identity number, also referred to as NIK. He said the system would significantly improve the government’s population database, which would allow for better processing of administrative services, such as voter registration for the next elections. The 2006 law regarding population administration gave the government a five-year time frame after it was passed to set up the new system. However, its rollout in selected cities, such as Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Denpasar, has been hampered by a lack of facilities for digital fingerprinting, important to avoid doubling up of identity numbers or one NIK being used by several individuals. The system features a single identity number of 16 digits for each citizen. The number will stay the same for individuals regardless of where they reside. Once it is up and running, the government envisions using the NIK to verify a number of documents, including driver’s licenses, passports, tax registration, insurance and land titles. The new system, Saut said, would hopefully reduce the incidence of identity fraud and administrative violations. While it has come under fire over privacy concerns, the single identity number system was backed by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM). “It will even reduce rights violations by government officials when we deal with them,” commissioner Yoseph Adi Prasetyo said. “We no longer have to come back every five years to renew our identity card, so they won’t have to ask for a birth certificate every time.” Saut said authorities would employ stringent measures to secure the new database. “It won’t be easily hacked,” he said. Laksana Tri Handoko, an IT expert from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), confirmed that such a system could be reliably secured, but he also said that an independent and transparent agency was needed to audit the system before it was implemented and to deal with any problems that might arise after it was up and running, including data theft.
