Nepal Cancels National ID System Support Tender, Plans In-House Management

Nepal has cancelled a global tender for the operation, maintenance, and technical support of its National Identity Card Management Information System, opting to manage the system internally even as delays in issuing national identity cards mount. The Department of National ID and Civil Registration, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, scrapped the procurement on May 8 and now plans to run the system with support from the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers.

Officials have framed the decision as a matter of control over citizen data. A member of the prime minister’s secretariat said the move was meant to keep sensitive citizen data under domestic control, with the government hiring the technical experts it needs to operate the system and strengthen what officials called Nepal’s digital sovereignty. Critical functions of the program, including biometric enrollment, data storage, and card printing, have relied heavily on foreign technology providers, with technical support previously supplied through the local representative of France’s IDEMIA.

Not everyone inside the department agreed. The director general at the time, who was transferred days after the cancellation, had argued the department lacked the expertise to independently operate and maintain the highest-tier technical infrastructure, according to a senior official. An official familiar with the process said three applications had been received and financial proposals were under review when instructions came from the prime minister’s office to halt the procurement.

The decision lands against a worsening card backlog. According to department data, biometric information has been collected from around 20 million people, but only 7.8 million national identity cards have been printed, leaving millions waiting. Technicians say the printing system is running at a fraction of its capacity, with one of two industrial printers broken down and the other operating at reduced output, and they warn the department lacks the in-house expertise to restore operations if the system fails.

The shift follows Nepal’s earlier work to knit its identity systems together, including establishing interoperability between its citizenship and national ID systems, even as the program’s reliability has come under strain.

Sources: The Kathmandu Post

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team