Pakistan's NADRA Excels in IT Services

All the hype about Indian IT sector makes it hard to believe that it is Pakistan, not India, which has widely deployed biometric identification technology to issue multi-purpose national ID cards and e-passports to its citizens. Is this just another case of the proverbial shoemaker's children going barefoot?



In fact, Pakistan is among the first few countries of the world to issue biometric national ID cards to 83 million citizens. Pakistan has also issued over 7 million e-passports to its citizens since October, 2004. These Multi-Biometric Electronic Passports, containing an RFID chip, facial and fingerprint images of the passport holder, PKI and other security features are compliant with ICAO standards.



Established in the year 2000, NADRA, the National Database and Registration Authority, is Pakistan's state-owned IT services company that specializes in implementing multi-biometric national identity cards and e-passports, as well as secure access verification and control systems in both public and private sectors. It is recognized among the top 50 IT firms in the world by the ID World Congress.

NADRA's database is among the largest, if not the largest, fully integrated databases in the world that supports both an Automatic Finger Identification System (AFIS) & a Facial Recognition System:

• National Data Warehouse
• Storage Capacity of 60 Terabytes
• Processing Speed of 18 Trillion Instructions/ Sec
• Multilingual Support of English/ Urdu/ Sindhi
• AFIS with a matching speed of 16 million/sec
• World's largest Facial Library of 83 million images (ICAO)
• Network Infrastructure
• Highly redundant, scalable and mission critical
• Connected with more than 8000 computers
• Equipped Terrestrial, VSAT, and DVB RCS/2 network Links

Beyond the national ID cards and passports, other current NADRA projects are motor vehicle registration (VINs or vehicle ID numbers), driver licenses, law enforcement, gun licensing, credit reporting, authentication of various transactions, statistical data, birth/ marriage/ death registration, GIS, e-Governance, disbursement of grants and planning at federal, provincial, district and local government levels using the national database.

NADRA's domestic public sector clients include the Ministry of Interior, Directorate of Immigration and Passports, National Highway Authority, Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehab Authority, UNHCR-Pakistan and Benazir Income Support Program for the poor.

NADRA issued Watan cash cards as part of a recent project to hand out Rs 28.8 billion among 1.527 million flood affected families in rural Pakistan last year. It is now working with the FBR, Pakistan's tax collectors, to catch millions of income tax evaders.

NADRA's corporate clients are Mobilink, Ufone, Telenor, Barclays Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Charter Bank, PTCL, IESCO, SNGPL and SSGPL.

International clients of NADRA include governments of Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria and Sudan. NADRA Technologies has recently entered into a agreement with Global Defense, a Turkish company, to pursue biometric IT services opportunities in Turkey and other European and Middle Eastern nations.

PTCL, another state-owned company, is rolling out fast broadband access at low cost, and building data centers in Pakistan to enable cloud computing on a large scale. PTCL has recently started rolling out 50 Mbits/sec broadband service in several cities and towns, and built large data centers in Karachi and Lahore.

IT sector is alive, and it is focusing on solving real problems in Pakistan. And the state-owned enterprises like PTCL and NADRA are building IT infrastructure and developing and deploying information and communication technology to lead the way for both public and private sector companies in the country.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

NADRA Case Study

Pakistan's $2.8 Billion IT Industry

PTCL Data Centers

PTCL's 50 Mbps Broadband Access in Pakistan

Mobile Internet in South Asia

Media and Telecom Sectors Growing in Pakistan

Internet Service Providers of Pakistan

Poverty Reduction Through Telecom Access

Pakistan's Telecom Boom

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Views: 1621

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 26, 2015 at 9:21am

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has given the deadline of Dec 20 to all operators to introduce the biometric system in the country, except Karachi. For Karachi, the deadline is Nov 30. All the five operators have made arrangements to meet the deadline.

“The operators have agreed to meet the deadline and the foolproof biometric system will be in place at their outlets by the end of next month,” a PTA spokesman told Dawn on Thursday. He said a SIM would be issued after getting a thumb impression of the applicant and subsequent verification by the National Database and Registration Authority.

A Ufone spokesperson claims that it is fully equipped to launch the biometric verification system in Karachi by Nov 30 and at all its customer service centres and franchise outlets across the country by Dec 20.

The installation of the system at around 70,000 to 75,000 retail points across Pakistan may cost about Rs2.8 billion.

In 2008, the PTA had introduced a SIM ownership verification system 667. A customer was required to provide the original CNIC and a thumb print to get a SIM. In 2009, verification system 668 was launched. It is a process to verify how many SIMs are registered against one CNIC. The subscriber can block a SIM not in his or her use.

The same year 789 system was introduced in which a customer has to make a call and answer a few questions like mother’s maiden name and the place of birth recorded by Nadra at the time of issuance of CNIC.

According to PTA, both 668 and 789 would remain in place after the installation of the biometric verification system.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1059299

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 26, 2015 at 10:26am

The biometric verification of SIM cards is in full swing across the country as one of the world’s largest and fastest efforts to collect biometric information gets underway.
The federal government concerned by an increase in illegal and untraceable SIMs had earlier ordered cellphone users to verify their identities through fingerprints for a national database, with failure to do so leading to a cut off from the cellular network – an option unthinkable to many.
Read: Fight against terrorism: Defining moment
The national database is being compiled as part of the government’s 20-point plan to curb terrorism in the wake of the December 16 Peshawar school attack.
Read: Our darkest hour
Officials said the Taliban gunmen who stormed the army-run school killing 150 people, including 133 children, were using cellphones registered to one woman who had no obvious connection to the attackers.
Cellular companies have been given till April 15 to verify the owners of 103 million SIMs issued in the country, according to the Washington Post.
Read: SIM verification: First phase to begin on January 12
In the past six weeks, 53 million SIMs belonging to 38 million have been verified through biometric screening.
National Action Plan: 53 million SIMs verified via biometric system
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Chairman Syed Ismail Shah has said the remaining 49 million SIMs will be verified within 91 days.
The biometric verification system was introduced in August 2014, therefore, the SIMs registered before the system came into force would have to go through the verification process.
Read: Biometric SIM verification: a threat or opportunity for cellular firms?
“Once the verification of each and every SIM is done, coupled with blocking unverified SIMs, the terrorists will no longer have this tool,” a senior Interior Ministry official, told the Washington Post. “The government knows that it’s an arduous job, both for the cellular companies and their customers, but this has to be done as a national duty.”
In the past six weeks, 53 million SIMs belonging to 38 million residents have been verified through biometric screening, officials said.
Mobilink with around 32 per cent of the country’s cellular customers, has verified more than 15 million SIM cards in the past two weeks — costing it $15 million, according to NBC News.
“We’ve tried to reach far and wide, especially the villages, deploying hundreds of vans and kiosks to ensure people have enough time and access to register,” Mobilink spokesperson Omar Manzur said.
“However, Pakistanis have large families, and users have a habit of buying multiple SIMs,” he added.
Omar further said the verification is a massive, nationwide exercise with a tight deadline.
“We have sent out 700 mobile vans all across Pakistan to reach out to these far-flung areas, the villages and small towns.”
As per World Bank, the mobile phone subscription rate in the country stands at about 73 per cent, roughly equal to the rate in India.
With 50 million more SIM cards left to be verified, phone companies have dispatched teams to make customers aware of the deadline.
“In a country like this, where the infrastructure is not available in many areas, this looks unprecedented,” said Wahaj us Siraj, the chief executive officer of Nayatel, an Internet supplier.
Once the verification process is complete, it will be easier for police and intelligence officials to trace terrorists, former deputy director of the Federal Investigation Agency, Ammar Jaffri said.
Read: SIM verification drive may discourage foreign investors
The deputy director said cellphones been used in the past to detonate explosive devices as well as to make extortion calls.
“We have new technology now, and we shouldn’t be afraid of these things, we should face it,” said Jaffri.
“Watching people when they move, it’s natural: Every country does it,” he added.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/843904/ticking-clock-get-fingerprinted-... 

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 3, 2015 at 10:13pm

Integrated Biometrics Tech To Track Teachers Attendance in #Pakistan. #Education

http://findbiometrics.com/integrated-biometrics-tech-to-track-teach...

Integrated Biometrics technology is helping the Pakistan Education Department to identify teachers in remote villages, the company has announced. Pakistani authorities are using the company’s Columbo fingerprint scanner to match the identities of 150,000 teachers in rural and remote areas against its own database.

The project is funded by the World Bank, with the Integrated Biometrics technology having been selected by contractor Intellitech, which is said to have considered multiple options before settling on the Columbo scanner.

The Columbo fingerprint scanner is FBI-compliant and uses light emitting sensor (LES) technology allowing it to function well in a range of environments. Its technology has proven appealing in a range of applications, with the scanner having been integrated into BETHCOM access control systems and Mobizent’s Intermec CN70e mobile device.

The case of the Pakistan Education Department is a little different, of course. The aim of the project is to develop real-time attendance monitoring in schools in remote villages, which of course could have very positive impacts in the country’s education system. Speaking in a press release, Integrated Biometrics CEO Steve Thies commented, “The fact that our products are being used to improve education for hundreds of thousands of children is incredibly humbling and rewarding.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 20, 2016 at 5:14pm

Pakistan has virtually attained one of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by providing legal identity to its citizens, including birth registration.

The target 9 of Goal 16 calls upon the member states of the United Nations (UN) who have pledged to achieve the SDGs by 2030, that they provide “legal identity for all, including birth registration”.

Since its inception in 2000, the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) has been issuing Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) to Pakistani citizens and its equivalent to the Pakistani diaspora. A CNIC is issued first at the age of 18, after the resident’s biometrics have been captured.

Acknowledging Pakistan’s efforts, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in a report said that, “the Nadra system is considered one of the world’s leading integrated national identification (ID) systems, and has provided technical assistance to the development of many systems in the developing world.”

“Nadra is also a financially self-sustaining system with a good business model in place,” the report added.

The report titled ‘Identity for Development in Asia and the Pacific’ says that Pakistan’s integrated national identification (ID) system was assessed as being at an advanced stage, as it uses cutting-edge processes and was near universal in its coverage. “The deduplication process uses biometrics and is robust while the third-party integration is easy and profuse...,” the report said. “The ID system offers a means to fast-track the development process by providing the most efficient way to identify people in developing countries.”

The report claimed that although there was no one model for providing a legal identity, the SDGs encouraged states to provide people with free or low-cost access to widely accepted, robust ID credentials.

“The UN sees ID as an enabler to achieving other SDGs in areas relating to social protection, health, finance, energy, and governance,” according to the report.

In 2012, with the aim to enhance security features on the card to make it difficult to forge as well as to expand usage in government service delivery, Nadra introduced the Smart National ID Card.

This contains a data chip, 36 security features and a match-on-card applet that improves the security of the smart card authentication by storing ID data on the card.

For Pakistani citizens, the report said, the CNIC is mandatory for conducting a vast range of transactions with the government as well as the private sector, such as voting, opening and operating bank accounts, obtaining a passport, purchasing vehicles and land and obtaining a driver’s licence.

In November 2014, the UN convened a ministerial conference on civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) in Asia and the Pacific. One outcome of the conference was the development of a regional action framework for CRVS in Asia and the Pacific.

Recognising the transformational potential of 21st century ID systems for the delivery of basic services to the poor, the World Bank launched its Identification for Development (ID4D) agenda -- a cross-practice initiative with a vision to make everyone count, to ensure a unique legal identity, and to enable digital ID-based services for all.

The report explained that a total of 18 per cent of developing countries had a scheme that was used for ID purposes only. “Nearly 55pc have digital IDs that are used for specific functions and services such as voting, cash transfers, or health; and only 3pc have foundational ID schemes that can be used to access an array of online and offline services. Moreover, 24pc of developing countries have no digital ID scheme,” it said.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1297293/pakistan-one-step-ahead-in-achievi...

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 12, 2017 at 9:15am

#Aadhaar, #India’s massive new ID system, suffers high failure rate. Failing to deliver for people http://www.wsj.com/articles/snags-multiply-in-indias-digital-id-rol... … via @WSJ

The government began building the system, called Aadhaar, or “foundation,” with great fanfare in 2009, led by a team of pioneering technology entrepreneurs. Since then, almost 90% of India’s population has been enrolled in what is now the world’s largest biometric data set.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who set aside early skepticism and warmed up to the Aadhaar project after taking power in 2014, is betting that it can help India address critical problems such as poverty and corruption, while also saving money for the government.

But the technology is colliding with the rickety reality of India, where many people live off the grid or have fingerprints compromised by manual labor or age.

---------


An Aadhaar ID is intended to be a great convenience, replacing the multitude of paperwork required by banks, merchants and government agencies. The benefits are only just beginning, backers say, as the biometric IDs are linked to programs and services.

But in rural areas, home to hundreds of millions of impoverished Indians dependent on subsidies, the impact of technical disruptions has already been evident.

After walking for two hours across rough underbrush in Rajasthan to get kerosene for the month, Hanja Devi left empty-handed because the machine couldn’t match her fingerprint with her Aadhaar number.

-------

The new system hasn’t eliminated attempts at fraud. In August, police in Rajasthan accused two shop managers of linking their fingerprints to a multitude of cards and stealing for months the rations of dozens of clients.

As for trouble connecting to the registry, better infrastructure, including steadier internet connections, will eventually also help, Mr. Pandey said.

For now, Mr. Prakash has found a way to cope without climbing trees. After scouring the village, he set up a shack in a spot with enough bandwidth to allow his fingerprint scanner to work.

It is hardly efficient. He issues receipts in the morning at the shack, then goes back to his shop to hand out the grains. Customers have to line up twice, sometimes for hours.

Mr. Prakash has applied to the government to operate without biometric identification, but his request was turned down, he said. “They said: ‘You have to keep trying.’ ”

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 14, 2017 at 8:58am

#Pakistan #NADRA's ex leader Tariq Malik among top 100 leaders in the global #identity industry https://oneworldidentity.com/identity-leaders/ … via @1worldidentity

Also includes Nanadan Nilekani and Pramod Varma of India's Aadhaar 


2016 was a year of innovation and explosive growth in the identity industry. Over the course of a 15-day open nomination period, we received over 1,000 nominations for 355 individuals. After compiling all of the nominations, the top 100 were selected based on the following selection standards:
Industry clout & influencer status
Number of publications & professional speaking engagements in 2016
Number of total nominations
Time in industry
The 2017 OWI 100 represents pioneers, innovators and pace setters who are working to advance inclusion, improve products and services, keep personal data safe, and to ensure and protect individual privacy. The list ranges from individual entrepreneurs to members of large organizations, and covers both public sector and not-for-profit industry advocates.
We are pleased to announce One World Identity’s Top 100

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 18, 2017 at 7:52am

#Mastercard to add e-payment function to National Identity Cards #CNIC in #Pakistan. #NADRA

http://www.dawn.com/news/1309228/mastercard-to-optimise-national-id...

Mastercard, a leading technology company in the global payments industry, on Wednesday announced a strategic collaboration with Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) Technologies to optimise national ID cards with an electronic payments functionality.

The move will allow citizens to carry out financial transactions and receive government disbursements by utilising the unique 13-digit identification number of their identity card.

Citizens will also be able to use their National ID to send and receive domestic and international remittances, eliminating the requirement to physically visit a bank branch or currency exchange house to meet their money transfer needs.

Under the terms of the agreement, Mastercard will also use its next-generation payment processing technologies to process all online payments made by Pakistani citizens for the issuance of National ID cards, passports or any other document provisioned by NadraTechnologies.

The announcement was made during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2017, taking place from January 17-20 in Davos, Switzerland.

Aurangzaib Khan, Mastercard's country Manager for Pakistan and Afghanistan, said: “Our collaboration with Nadra Technologies is a testament to our commitment towards building a reliable and secure ecosystem for online payments in Pakistan."

"The new service will make international remittances more convenient both for the sender and beneficiary, and this is significant since Pakistan is one of the top receivers of remittances from abroad," he added

"Combining the National ID card with payment features will transform it into a powerful, multi-purpose channel for citizens to carry out financial transactions, and will facilitate faster and more efficient delivery of vital government services,” Aurangzaib elaborated.

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 8, 2017 at 6:09am

Why Wikileaks cables on Pakistan’s NADRA need serious attention

https://crssblog.com/2017/06/08/why-wikileaks-cables-on-pakistans-n...

Below is the excerpt from the 2009 Assange-Imran interview, along with the leaked cables mentioning Malik and Gillani. 

The interview excerpt:

Imran, we discovered a cable [09ISLAMABAD1642] in 2009 from the Islamabad Embassy. Prime Minister Gilani and Interior Minister Malik went into the embassy and offered to share NADRA – and NADRA is the national data and registration agency database. The system is currently connected through passport data but the government of Pakistan is adding voice and facial recognition capability and has installed a pilot biometric system as the Chennai border crossing, where 30,000 to 35,000 people cross each day. This NADRA system, that is the voting record system for all voters in Pakistan, and a front company was set up in the United Kingdom – International Identity Services, which was hired as the consultants for NADRA to squirrel out the NADRA data for all of Pakistan. What do you think about that? Is that a…? It seems to me that that is a theft of some national treasure of Pakistan, the entire Pakistani database registry of its people.

Excerpt from the leaked Cables:

Both PM Gilani and Interior Minister Malik pointed out that the National Data Registration Agency (NADRA) already collects a wide spectrum of information on Pakistani citizens, from driving records to DNA. Malik offered to share NADRA-generated information on Pakistani citizens, within the constraints imposed by privacy concerns. NADRA is at the heart of what the GOP intends to be an integrated border management system, Malik said, and suggested that API/PNR sharing could be a subset of this larger system. The system is currently connected through passport data, but the GOP is adding voice and facial recognition capability and has installed a pilot biometrics system at the Chaman border crossing, where 30-35,000 people cross each day. Reiterating that he welcomed both USG assistance and the arrival of a DHS team to discuss PNR, Malik agreed to set up a joint U.S.-Pakistan task force to work out a way forward.

(S//NF) Comment: The Secretary’s visit was an essential and well-received step to rebuild the trust between DHS and the GOP that will be necessary to reach an eventual deal on API/PNR. GOP officials are clearly concerned about the political fallout if any deal to share API/PNR data became public. Malik was direct in expressing his need for model agreements or other legal frameworks to help allay concerns of a politically embarrassing court challenge to API/PNR data sharing and the potential issues with airlines of third countries. While this information will no doubt be helpful, Post strongly recommends further political-level bridge building before we can effectively engage at the technical level. On senior officials’ broad requests for more assistance on border security, we caution that the openness we regularly see in high-level meetings is often not followed through at the institutional level. Post will work with DHS, State, and DoD (all of whom are already working on border security and training issues) to target DHS assistance clearly so as to complement our existing security and training programs. End Comment.

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 17, 2021 at 4:49pm

Tariq Malik returns to lead Pakistan digital ID efforts amid biometrics leadership appointments
Mitek, BioCatch, Auth0, and Tascent add talent

https://www.biometricupdate.com/202106/tariq-malik-returns-to-lead-...

Pakistan’s cabinet has approved the return of former National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) Chairman Tariq Malik from his position as chief technical advisor to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Dawn reports.

Malik has also served the World Bank’s ID for Development initiative, and is part of the World Bank’s Technical Experts Group (TEG).

He left Pakistan’s national digital ID authority in early-2014 following an acrimonious dispute with the government of Nawaz Sharif.

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 4, 2021 at 10:35am

Over the past two decades, the CNIC has come to underpin all aspects of Pakistani life. Since it is also an official marker of citizenship, an impounded card renders its holder, to all intents and purposes, stateless.

https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/pakistan-biometric-ide...

Established in 2000, NADRA has been internationally celebrated for designing and maintaining a national database that holds the personal and biometric information of 98% of the Pakistani population. The World Bank has referred to the organization as “the single source of truth for identification data” in the country. The authority — which falls under the jurisdiction of the interior ministry, but operates as an independent corporate body — has since helped to implement identity-related projects in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and South Sudan.


But, as thousands of Pakistanis can attest, NADRA is also a perfect example of the dangers of unchecked digitization, of how centralized databases can be wielded against people who don’t fit the state’s idea of a model citizen — to the particular detriment of women, working-class people and ethnic, sexual and religious minorities — and how such systems can push someone like Gulzar even further into the margins. The information collected by NADRA, staggering in its volume and increasing by the minute, is also maintained in the absence of legal safeguards, meaning that there is no way of knowing how it has been, will be, or could be used in the future.

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