The state will roll out digital IDs in the upcoming year, deputy minister for innovation Nikodemos Damianou said on Monday.
Meanwhile, it also emerged that the deputy ministry is mulling scrapping the beleaguered e-justice digitisation contract.
Decisions on the latter are to be taken by mid-September, the minister said.
Meanwhile, as far as the digital ID goes, the minister told state broadcaster CyBC, “the best way to explain it, is to liken it to the Covid pass scan.”
“It will function in a similar way, the minister said, enabling digital access to one’s ID, driver’s licence, and MOT, as a first step,” Damianou said.
Thereafter, other documents, such as football fan cards, can be linked to this data, he explained.
“We are cooperating with the Greek state’s [digitisation services] to become the first two countries in the EU with reciprocity within the digital ID system,” Damianou said.
The eventual goal of the project is the EU-wide roll-out of the “digital wallet” – a digital identity enabling the user to confirm who they are and other personal information. It is to be used both online and offline for public and private services across the EU.
As for the troubled e-justice system roll out, the ministry will decide within two weeks whether or not to get out of the contract with the appointed service provider, after a botched introduction, ongoing since the start of the year, prompted top legal experts to label the whole enterprise a debacle.
According to the original contract, the e-justice system’s pilot version should have been operational by the end of 2021.
Damianou has remained silent on the matter for months, after repeated failed attempts to get the system back online.
“We now have a record of the number of errors and the types of corrections needed,” Damianou said.
The corrections have been made according to the provider, the minister added, and checks had been carried out by the system’s end-users to determine if the fixes were adequate.
It has been reported that the contract is likely to be scrapped as users are not satisfied, however, Damianou refused to comment, saying only that stakeholders in the committee formed after the system’s initial failure, that is, Bar Association and legal service officials, will take a “decisive stand” soon.
It will not be difficult for the state to extricate itself from the contract, the minister said, since its terms are clear. Originally the legal system’s digitisation of services was commissioned for a cost of €5.5 million, and so far, the state had paid out €1.2 million of this, the minister said.
“[In the event the contract is scrapped] the state will see to recoup this amount which will be simple to do,” Damianos assured.
Elsewhere, the minister said the state was moving ahead with the introduction, within 2024, of a Digital Citizen mobile app, that will enable the state to proffer digital solutions to the public, in tandem with an upgrade to the central government access portal [gov.cy].
The goal is for this application to gradually become a part of everyone’s daily life.
