So my government is proposing a new National ID scheme. This will be used to identify s citizen as well as keep track of property, taxes etc.

Parliament just started the debate on how it would work today. It’s set to be implemented by December 2019. My government tends not think things through so as to prevent s disaster like what’s happening in the Netherlands as per @linuxxx musings, I’m trying to gather insight from the industry to compose a document of considerations then getting a law firm to draft the laws it would need to compliment it

I'm for the national ID in theory

I now want 3 things

1- The mischief to be defined. Right now everyone is speculating what the goal is, not even those strongly in favour agree on how this should be used. Some say it is to help fight crime others say it not a crime fighting tool so fears of human rights needs not come into it. We need to be clear, because how far we go is very relevant to the stated objective.

2- Having defined the mischief to be cured, we can see what is needed to meet that. Perhaps we may make certain things optional to answer e.g. religion.

3- The data is to be secured by the passing of another law. That is putting the cart before the horse. We can't agree to give up data not knowing beforehand how the data will be secured. Pass that law first, let us feel safe knowing it will not be a repeat of SIPPA where anyone could go online and type in a name and get trn and address and property registered by that person.

@Alice the deadline is so that they’ll actually get something done instead of it just being another nice to have item in their manifesto

Yeah. At the same time this has been done before. Just adopt a model that’s known to work. I’d say adopt Estonia’s with some quality of service changes.

@Bitwise can you tell me more about it in practice?

@chrisebryan thoughts?

Well your government is on a right track, because future is digital.
In estonia our government released National ID card in 2002. It evolved to Mobile ID, that is used along with sim-card(wont work if there is no reception), that however involved to Smart ID, (internet based). Since then all the systems have evolved for the better.

For example we use it for
Banking

Governmental Institutions
-Tax and Customs Board
-Road Administration
-e-Business Register
-Patent Office
and more

Public Services
-Medical Centres
-electronic kindergarden (eLasteaed)
and more

E-services
-Internet providers
-electricity providers
-landline providers
-tv cable providers
-insurance providers
-Universities
etc...

Other webpages
-E-Learning Development Centre
-Apollo Book Shop
-Fast loan providers

There are many more usages for them.

I'll leave you the links for research. They are all in english.

https://id.ee/index.php/?id=30500

https://www.eesti.ee/eng/services

But from my perspective id-card works poorly, because of bad code implementation.

Because of that In october 2017, it was reported that a code library developed by Infineon, which had been in widespread use in security products such as smartcards and TPMs, had a flaw (later dubbed the ROCA vulnerability) that allowed private keys to be inferred from public keys.

As a result, all systems depending upon the privacy of such keys were vulnerable to compromise, such as identity theft or spoofing.
Affected systems included more than 750,000 Estonian national ID cards, and Estonian e-residency cards. (Our population is only about 1 352 320)

They promised about 25k updated cards per day, but in reality they couldn't reach even 5k updates per 24h. (Bad server management)

What i'm saying is that, if everything is implemented fairly correctly, then it should work without any hiccups.

And it truly succeeds only if you country's internet coverage is more than 95%

"Estonia updated the targets and measures for broadband as part of its Digital Agenda 2020 in early 2014. The strategy envisages full coverage with connections of at least 30 Mbps by 2020 and aims to promote take-up of ultra-fast subscriptions with at least 100 Mbps with the objective that these account for 60% or more of all internet subscriptions by the same year. Estonia is currently deploying a middle-mile network of fibre-optic cables. After completion, 98% of all residential buildings, companies, and agencies will be located within 1.5 km of at least one fibre network access point."

"Telia's High Speed Internet, up to 375 Mbit / s with 4G Internet connection, covers more than 97% of the territory of Estonia. "

4G coverage map: https://i.imgur.com/QyT7wr5.png