National ID Project

[Cedric Anil]

Greetings everyone!
Below is an article written by Hon. Edward Baliddawa, a member of the Parliamentary ICT committee. He sheds some light on the controversial National ID project and Germany Company Mulhubeur

Dear friends,
I salute you all. It has been long since I last posted on the list, however I
keep on following keenly all the postings. I thank you for keeping our
fraternity on this list alive.
May be, I should first of all inform you that the last couple of weeks haven't
been all the best for me. I lost my father who succumbed to prostrate cancer and
dementia.
Well, that aside, I guess many have been reading in the papers about the sad
revelations concerning the National ID project. I don't know how much already
know about this project, but I thought I might help to shed some light on it
from my perspective as a member of the ICT Committee in Parliament. I have
always felt that as a Committee we owe you an update. 
The genesis of this project can be traced in the government's long time desire
to digitize the Electoral register to curb double and un warranted voting.
Efforts to do this were made sometime back but to my knowledge not much was
achieved.
So some people who had contacts with a Germany firm Muelber co ya Ted and
introduced it to the government. The proposal was to make digitized national IDs
for the citizens of Uganda. The idea was good, but a suggestion was made that
they do start with the electoral register which was also agreeable to both
parties ( Govt and Muelber).
A total contactual sum of Euros 64 million was agreed and a  three year contract
was signed on 9th March 2010.
So far the government of Uganda has paid Muhlber Euros 47 million hence
remaining an outstanding balance of  Euros 17 million equivalent to Shs.56.5
billion.
This project was placed under the supervision of the Minister of Internal
Affairs headed at the time by the former 3rd Deputy Prime Minister, Hon. Kirunda
Kivenjinja. My simple guess is that it was placed under Internal Affairs because
of two assumptions:
It was dealing with issuance of IDs which is purely a mandate of the Citizens
and Immigration Boards
It was assumed that issuance of IDs is a security matter and the Minister of
Internal Affairs is the presiding Chair of the National Security Committee.

However, in my view what the proponents of this project didn't tell the top
Executive of the Country is that issuance of IDs is only one of the outputs that
we as a country would get if we implemented a holistic a National Population
Databank as envisaged in the NITA Act 2009.
Secondly, they also didn't reveal to the country that the 64 million euros given
to Muhlber would not be the only money needed to have IDs issued. I suspect this
was deliberate concealment by the contractor.
Soon after signing the contract and an amount of 22 million euros paid as down
payment, indications started coming up to the effect that, the government of
Uganda had to finance the operational costs of activities such as collection and
updating of information within the electoral commission as well collecting new
data, establishing a personalization center where they would be printing the
cards.
The contractor was supposed to deliver 15 million virgin cards, but so far they
have delivered 2 million cards that are being stored at BOU.
Well, the snag came when they were required to work with the Electoral
Commission to digitize and update national voters register, an  excise  that was
embarked on in late 2009 early 2010. Some data of about 5 million voters was
captured and is now at EC.
However, the Department of Immigration that was to handle the issuance of IDs
contends that this data cannot be used for the purpose of issuing IDs, hence
they need funding to do this excise afresh. The budget they have been putting
ahead is about Shs. 87 billion.

It was on this background that, we in the Committee of ICT raised an inquiry
with the people in Internal Affairs as to why they trying to execute a project
of that magnitude without regard to the provisions of the NITA Act and imput of
NITA. It is our view that although, this project was initially presented as mere
issuance of IDs, with the amount of money spent and going to be spent, as a
country we can get more value for money if we reviewed the governance structure
of the project. In our view, this should be handled as a broader project whose
end result should be for Uganda to have a National Population Databank. We
contend that once this data bank is in place, there are various outputs that
would be used to facilitate many institutional deliverables such URA, NSSF,
Banks, Police, Health, Defense, Electoral Commission, etc..
These institutions would be using the National Databank to produce outputs such
as the National ID, Drivers Permits, Financial Cards, Medical Insurance Cards,
NSSF Cards.
But to get ton this point in our view there must be multi- sectoral approach to
the governance of this project. In fact His Excellency the President had
foreseen this and issued a directive in September 2009, long before the actual
contract with Muhlber was signed. In his letter to the the then, Rt. Hon.
Kirunda Kivejinja, HE directed that NITa should house the  Secretariat for the
National Security Information System ( NSIS).  To our surprise, this directive
was ignored and the guys in Internal Affairs went on to with their plans to
limit this national project to mere issuance of IDs. So we summoned the
officials from the Ministries of Internal Affairs together with those from ICT
to try and help them harmonize the governance of the project.
Our recommendation was that a multi sectoral steering committee be formed
including Internal Affairs, ICT, UBOS, JLOS, Education, Health, Public Service,
BOU and Security. We emphasized the President's directive for a Secretariat to
be set in NITA and National Project Manager be appointed under the supervision
of the Secretariat. We also advised that each implementing agency such as
Ministry of Internal Affairs should go ahead and set up it's own internal
secretariat and appoint a project manager for purposes of issuing IDs. URA, BOU
and others would also probably do the same  for their tasks and deliverables.
We also demanded that they go and come up with a well defined agreed upon
governance structure and budgeted road map for the project.

Actually, this hard started on this and a number of stake holders meetings took
place. There appeared to be some kind of common understanding and harmonized
position on the way forward. But alas! Some people within the Ministry of
Internal Affairs for simple selfish reasons sought again to highjack the process
and started raising issues of legality as to who is mandated by the law to do
what. They contend that according to the Constitution they are the only ones
mandated to register people and issue IDs. There is none one contesting this
position, but they only thought to mislead the Leadership of the Citizens and
Immigration Board to make them think that someone and ostensibly NITA is taking
away their baby.
So the project started hitting a dead end and subsequently the arise of the
Parliamentary Committee Probe. The matter was raised on the floor of Parliament
by Hon. Mawanda  and since the project had initially been placed under the
Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Speaker of Parliament instructed that the
Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Internal Affairs handle the petition.
I believe, that before the report of the committee is complied, the committee on
Defence will interact with us on the ICT committee to have our views heard and
probably adopted.

In summary, it is my considered opinion that we cannot role back the contractual
obligation that we entered into notwithstanding the manner in which we got
there. We have already paid close to 78% of the contractual sum. The contract
runs up to 2013, meaning we are already half way although really no cards have
been produced except for the 218.
In my view every thing should done to salvage this project so that we can at
least get some value for money. We can only achieve this by reviewing the
governance framework of the project. Squabbling of officials in the Ministry of
Internal Affairs should not be allowed t kill this rather very strategic project
for the country.

I know, I have written too much, but well I thought I owe it to you. In absence
of a PRO for the Committee, I feel a deep sense of indebtedness  to you all my
colleagues in the ICT fraternity not only regarding this ID Project but also
many other issues concerning ICT sector. I will probably write you on those
later.

Kind regards

Edward Baliddawa
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http://www.parliament.go.ug

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Cedric Anil

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