Sri Lanka’s new unique digital ID project in progress - State Minister

State Minister of Technology Kanaka Herath states that the Indo-Sri Lanka Joint Project for the Sri Lanka Unique Digital Identity Project (SL-UDI) is underway and that biographic and biometric information, facial, iris and fingerprint will be collected and entered into a central system for the purpose of issuing identification cards.

The State Minister made this remark at the first meeting of the Ministerial Consultative Committee on Technology of the fourth session of the ninth Parliament held recently, the Department of Communication of the Parliament said.

Furthermore, digitalizing information under one identification number in all documents starting from the birth certificate had been discussed at length, according to the Parliamentary Communications Department.

The officials present at the meeting have expressed that though the proposal to do so has already been adopted and is in progress, the mechanism of execution has caused it to be frozen. 

The Committee suggested that rather than trying to digitize past documents which cause delays and backlogs, to skip the past generations and begin fresh from one batch which will allow it to move forward, it added.

Members of Parliament Imran Maharoof, Samanpriya Herath, Weerasumana Weerasinghe, Ashoka Priyantha, and Gunathilaka Rajapaksha have taken part in the Committee meeting held.