1. PNG Civil and Identity Registry
Pacific Regional Workshop on Legal Identity and Identity Security 8-10th July 2019
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Noel MOBIHA
Registrar General
PNG Civil and Identity Registry

2. 1. WHERE WE ARE NOW?
(MAY 2019)

3. PAPUA NEW GUINEA

4. SEA: around same as land 800 + languages & dialects 1,000 tribes
POP: 8 million +/-
Registered: 1,053,396
LAND: 464,000 km2
SEA: around same as land
800 + languages & dialects
1,000 tribes
Pop growth rate: 3.5%
Many religions
People:
Melanesians
Papuans
Negritos
Micronesians
Polynesians

5. What is the role of PNGCIR?
Sharing of data is not happening in country due to existing legislations.
Currently the PNG National Identity Document (PNG NID) Project is being used to collect all CRVS information of the population.
We estimate the population to be around 8 million in 2018.
Established by Act of Parliament. Civil Regstration Act Ammended 2014.
New Bill with more sectoral inputs is in final stage – to go to Parliament this year.
Maintains a register for births, marriages, adoptions, divorces and deaths. This includes also running maintaining an Archive.
CRVS data is viewd by Government of PNG as foundation data for evidence based planning.

6. Development history
Prior to 2014 the registry was parked as a division within the Community Development Department.
This changed in An amendment to the 1963 Act was made.
Huawei Technologies designed and installed a customised PNG Civil Identity Registration System (CIRS) in 2012 commissioned in
At the time of registration for persons over 18 years of age enables a person to collect a Birth Certificate and NID card.
Persons under 18 get only a birth certificate
Progress in registrations of all CRVS data has been slow.
A number of operational technical issues have been identified in terms of CIRS system limitations.
Vendor Lock in;
Software;
Integration;
and
Integration issues.

9. Roll out so far Provinces connected: Districts Developers / Partners:
16/22 provinces have fixed offices/mobile operations.
Two provincial offices got burnt down.
Districts
15/89 Districts connected
Developers / Partners:
Ok Tedi
Total E & P PNG Ltd
Pacific Agro
Department of Education (Institution)

10. Speed of REGISTRATION AND Delivery of NID cards and Birth Certificates
Turn around times are around one month. Urgent cases 3 days.
All our backlogs from slowly reduces
Speed of turn around being addressed. We have implemented a data entry centre to type in registrations and increased approval staffing numbers.
This reduces the processing time by some 10 working days for an application.
Have and will increased call centre staff.

11. Regions Registered %of Total TOTAL Southern 520,276 49% Highlands
162,046
15%
Momase
258,665
25%
New Guinea Islands
112,409
11%
TOTAL
1,053,396
100%

12. HIGH LEVEL SUMMARY MAY 2019 16 PROVINCES CONNECTED
15 DISTRICTS SIGNED MOU
1 MILLION REGISTRATIONS
STAFFING OF 400

13. 2. WHERE DO WE WANT TO GO?

14. POPULATION July 2021 Mop Up Operations Rural remote communities
Others not done
Mop Up Operations
July 2021

15. LOCK IN ARRANGEMENTS
CIRS CORE
Interfacing ring

16. 3. HOW DO WE GET THERE?

17. Support Structure
PNGCIR will supply a minimum of one mobile registration kit per 20,000 people to do registration in 20 months.
Need corporation from all provinces, districts and development partners. Corporation guided through MOUs for all.
Targeting connecting all provinces.
Need a young, smart, innovative and willing to work professional team – preferably under 30 years of age.
Build a supporting infrastructure for the use of NID card.
Allocated a budget of 2 million cards to deliver in This means more staff (peaking at 1,300), more mobile registration kits, more floor space, More of everything.
Challenge is to make this happen with the current budget of K20.8 million this.

18. Provinces to fund one kit per District and Districts to fund 2 kits each. Total of 3 kits funded internally. Kits from PNGCIR is additional.
With above can do one district of 70,000 people in 10 months.
Need to run a 24 hour shift for data entry and approval processes.
Call centre has been established with processes being drawn up to add value to customer enquiries.
Facebook is being used to improve customer access. From January-February we had 71.3k viewers. February – March (current) we have 65.1k viewers.
Cost around $US1,500 for 6 months.

19. Use of the working prototype district model to increase speed of registration.
Monitoring performances of all mobile kits. Looking at 1,000 registrations per month for rural and 2,000 per month for towns.
Backend to run 24/7 operations in data entry and approvals.
Will be trialling printing of NID cards in provinces/ districts. Currently we are only printing birth certificates in the provinces/districts.

20. Technical Support
About to finalise a new NID card printer with a new vendor.
Use of current stock of NID cards – currently undertaken durability test of the existing stock to reduce costs.
New design for the new printer for the NID card.
Need to negotiate with existing vendor to interconnect peripheral devices (like printers) etc to the core registration system software.
System upgrade being discussed
Serious on knowledge transfer.
Looking into secure ways to automate signing of certificates

21. Use of remote technologies for data upload.
Remote sensing data critical for remote villages identification.
More desktops will be purchased.
Costs of telecommunications will increase. Smart use of VSATs will reduce costs.
Increasing specialists numbers in database, software and networking teams

22. Legal Issues
Our Bill the Civil and Identity Registration is under its 12th review.
It will allow for data sharing options. STEM sector to be involved in discussing regulations.
We have written regulations and developed SOP and all supporting the forms including the MCCOD

23. A RURAL MODEL

24. 4. CONCLUSION

25. Conclusion
We are studying existing and working processes of data collection to find ways to improve on.
Need to create hunger in registrations and collection of CRVS data.
We need more funding support. To development partners, with you assisting the NID Project you are serving the whole country not just a district or a province.
We have a young team with high energy levels. We are pushing for knowledge transfer in all we do and the building of the PNG Knowledge Bank.
Trialling NID card printing in Districts.
Political support has been good.
Targeting December 2021 to complete the nationwide registration
Challenges are many but – we believe with God’s Speed and Blessings it is doable.

26. WE ACKNOWLEDGE OUR SPONSORS
Bloomberg D4HI (Global Health Advocacy Incubator, Vital Strategies, Melbourne Uni);
UN Systems (UNDP, UNFPA and UNICEF);
DFAT (Govt of Australia); and
National Planning and Monitoring Department (GoPNG)

27. TENK YU TUMAS