Brazil’s Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the body responsible for the national digital identity program (ICN) said that Brazilian states are currently being assessed to determine their readiness for the new digital ID scheme to be implemented. The move aims at tackling issues such as benefit fraud.
The technical requirements to be able to roll-out the National Identification Number (DNI) the coming November include the number of people that have been already registered in the national biometric database of the state in which he resides, as well as the number of possible locations available to execute the validation checks needed within the app that will contain all citizens IDs.
Approximately 100 million Brazilian citizens, corresponding to almost 50% of the entire population, had their biometric data taken by the TSE until now. According to the authority, the initial goal was to decrease fraud in elections.
Presently, the Brazilian digital ID database interacts with social security data, and according to the TSE, the information contained in the ICN could be used by the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) and find another use in preventing benefit fraud.
In the future, the project will integrate several important documents such as driving licenses, birth and marriage certificates, public health registration data, and ID cards, grouping up even more sensitive information into one digital support.
The initial idea for a DNI originated back in 1997, determining the evolution of state-levels registration systems into a digital unified ID registry.
TSE began to gradually re-register voters using biometric information in 2008. In 2017, the DNI project was approved and the first trials begun in February 2018, with TSE staff testing the digital-form ID.
In May, members of the parliament and civil figures in the central government joined the trials.
According to the plan, the new digital ID service should be up and running at full capacity by 2020.
