Around 800,000 Filipinos have accomplished the first step of the online registration for the national ID, three weeks after the program has been launched.
According to Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the number of Filipinos who have registered online for the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) reached 849,862.
The online registration aims to boost the public’s engagement with PhilSys without compromising health and safety protocols amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
After several technical issues which plagued the pilot of the program, PSA assured that it is now upgrading its servers to increase user capacity and enhance site performance.
Prior to the online registration, a total of 33.3 million Filipinos have completed the first step of registration via house-to-house collection of demographic data in priority provinces.
Of this, 6.4 million have advanced to the second step which involves the capture of a registrant’s biometric data such as their iris scans, fingerprint scans and front-facing photograph.
PSA also started step three, which involves the issuance of the PhilSys number and the national ID card itself.
At least 70 million Filipinos are expected to be registered by yearend. By the end of 2022, 92 million Filipinos are targeted to be registered with PhilSys.
