By Chito Chavez

An information technology (IT) expert has warned that the government will incur huge losses if the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) decides to hire the services of a Dutch firm as primary supplier for the national ID system.

“Awarding Gemalto the national ID contract will just be repeating the technical failures wrought upon the Comelec last May,’’ said IT expert Rafael R. Gutierrez, the Philippine representative of a US web security and cloud-based solutions company.

He was referring to the consortium of Nextix Inc. which is a subsidiary of Gemalto NV.

In an interview in Quezon City, Gutierrez questioned why a company with a 68.14 percent failure rate will be entrusted to supply or be part of the country’s national ID system.

He noted the same firm has ‘credibility issues’’ as evidenced by the case filed against the company in Estonia.

With no personal, financial interest, or axe to grind against any supplier, Gutierrez shot down doubts that he belongs to a demolition team from the firm’s rival suppliers who joined the bidding process for the project.

Gutierrez have obtained a Comelec IT performance report regarding the technical failure rates of the Voter Registration Verification Machines (VRVMs) in the May 2019 elections and expressed shock at the high failure rates.

“Users were not able to login using their smartcard or password. This points to the poor quality of the supplier’s smartcards and smartcard readers,” he added.

Gutierrez expressed concern over the supposed “distressingly failed” performance of Gemalto’s technology on identification and verification of voters in the last elections as it may be passed on to the “next victim”, the PSA.

“Last May, in Caloocan City, 607 out of 841 VRVMs, or 72.18 percent, were not utilized or did not function. In Quezon City, 940 out of 1,487 or 63.21 percent of VRVMS were not utilized or did not function. Region VI was particularly bad. In Iloilo, 2,215 of 2,572 VRVMs or 86.12 percent were not utilized, while in Negros Occidental, 1,944 out of 2,353 or 82.62 percent were not utilized. Nationwide, the percentage of VRVMs that were not utilized or did not function was 68.14 percent, because out of a total of 27,747 VRVMs, 18,906 were not utilized or did not function,” Gutierrez said.

“In Cotabato, the utilization rate was even zero percent. Of the machines working, most complaints were raised because of ‘no contingency,” Gutierrez asserted.

In a Comelec report, Gutierrez noted the nature of most of the failures were “user cannot be found” error, automatic shutdown, smartcard not functioning, tap card not working, “user cannot log in” error, or defective fingerprint scanner.

To recall, the PSA worked hand-in-hand with the Comelec in conducting the Random Manual Audit (RAM), the post-election exercise of determining whether the automated count of the Vote Counting Machines (VCMs) is accurate based on a manual verification of said count.

The corporate consortium of Nextix and Gemalto was the lowest bidders for the national ID system at P1,188,888,000.00 last May 29, 2019.

Bidding is now in the post qualification stage, where the agency evaluating the bids examines the financial and technical capabilities of the qualified bidders.

The second lowest bidder was the joint venture of Dermalog and Microgenesis at P1,277,942,614.16, while the highest bidder was the group of Iwave, IRIS Corporation and Global Myoho Renge Copy Inc. with a bid of 1,368,000,888.00. Filmetrics was declared not eligible.

Last year, PSA head Lisa Grace Bersales said they will enrol into the system citizens who do not have any government-issued ID, including the poor who are beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), indigenous people, persons with disabilities, and senior citizens.

President Rodrigo Duterte signed Republic Act No. 11055 establishing the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) on August 5, 2018.

Under this law, Filipino citizens and foreign residents of the country are required to register demographic and biometric information with the new identification system.

The law created a central identification platform for all citizens and resident foreigners in the Philippines with the PSA is the primary implementing agency.

The Philsys Registry Office (PRO) was created under the PSA to look into the creation and management of the ID system.

National ID cards have actually been in use since December 2018.

The PSA had a trial run with the one million individuals under the Unconditional Transfer Program.

Once this trial run is completed and deemed successful, the application for everyone else will begin.

The PSA projects a full roll-out by September 2019.

“We are on-track as regards to the rollout of PhilSys,” Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia said.

Gutierrez said apart from the disaster with the VRVMs in the last mid- term election, for which Comelec awarded to Gemalto and Nextix P987,146,922.00, “the terrible waste of public funds in the 2007 elections is still fresh in the mind of the public’’.

In one of his state of the nation addresses, President Duterte stated government agencies has appealed to the Commission on Audit (COA) to review the “lowest bidder” system in public procurement processes.

The President explained this system “abets greater corruption in government, creating badly executed projects by poorly chosen contractors.”