DICT bids out P496 million deal for digital national ID

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is preparing the digital national ID by bidding out a P496-million project for its operations and management.

The DICT is seeking a contractor that would carry out the five components of delivering a digital national ID, which is expected to simplify identity verification for everyday transactions.

The contract will be divided into five deliverables, the first of which amounts to P198.71 million for the subscription to a public cloud for the verification of digital national ID.

The second, costing P74.41 million, covers the subscription to a hardware security module. The third, amounting to P59.38 million, involves the creation of an analytics and monitoring tool.

The fourth, requiring the largest at P149.03 million, entails the subscription to a hybrid platform for the interconnection capability and operations services of the digital national ID. The last costs P14.75 million, and it relates to security features.

Given the project’s scale, the DICT requires bidders to prove their cloud architecture is backed in a secondary data center to ensure redundancy.

Bidders must also be capable of deploying a multizone response across data centers in Southeast Asia to prevent single points of failure when disaster strikes.

Likewise, bidders must have established reputable relations with database engines, and they must also put up a self-service portal accessible to DICT administrators.

The DICT will hold a pre-bid conference on Oct. 26, and will open offers on Nov. 9. It will draw capital for the project from continuing appropriations from its 2025 budget.

In September, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) approved the P2.48-billion offer made by Unisys Public Sector Service Corp. to upgrade the national ID system. The PSA is now waiting for comparative proposals from investors interested in the project.

If approved, the project will award to Unisys the operations and maintenance of the national ID system for up to 20 years after a six-month transition period.

The project will include card production, citizen registration and technical integration, including the management of its digital backbone.