The World Bank mission for the DMADD project convenes discussions with officials of DNR Department of National Registration (DNR) management team, to realign the project with the current government for establishing a robust national identity system. The team consisting of Mr. Jerome Bezzina, the Senior Digital Development Specialis and Task Team leader and Ms. Anna Metz, Digital Development Specialist, met with the management team of the Department of National Registration (DNR). The DNR team was led by the Deputy Minister Mohamed Aly, along with Director General Mohamed Riznee and Mohamed Umair, Director -ICT.

This is the first mission of the team, after the new administration took over. Hence, major focus of the mission is to align the project with the new Government’s digital goals particularly DNRs new policy objectives to establish a robust CRSVID system. The teams discussed how D’MADD project can restructure to the changes.

The DNR team shared their plans including the new laws they are currently working on. They also highlighted the issues and conflicts with the current workflow and coordination with the relevant a organizations particularly the local government authority and the local councils. They also highlighted their work for identity verification with other organisations like Police and Banks. The DNR emphasized that their current approach to improve the identity management system that can be economically feasible, rather than issuing a newly designed card with technology that cannot be maintained in the long run.

DNR also highlighted the experience they encountered while providing the services online during the COVID-19 lockdown. The system design did not address the needs of digitally illiterate, old aged or special needs people. The DNR is determined to eliminate such lapses and include inclusive designs for online service delivery.

The mission team ensured that the project will continue to proceed with the technical assistance components to conduct a high level analysis of the current system and providing required recommendations for the system design, software and hardware requirements. However, they emphasized the importance of submitting the Data Privacy Act to the parliament, which is a mandatory condition for procurement of software and hardware and requested DNR’s support in the process.

Mr. Ahmed Haleem (Communications Specialist) and Ms. Fathimath Shafa (Project Officer) participated from the D’MADD team lead by the Project Manager Dr. Ibrahim Waheed.