Encoding errors plague national ID; PSA to conduct updating

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) will conduct a massive updating of the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) to correct erroneous data encoded.

Baby Jean Alid, PSA registration officer, admitted that there were erroneous data collected with the registration of PhilSys.

“There were a lot (of errors) with the massive registration. So maybe this year, in May or the second semester, we will conduct an updating operation,” Alid said in a mix of Filipino and English.

“We will open many centers for this,” she added.

The PSA will conduct the update after all have been fully registered to the PhilSys. Among the issues that the PSA will correct is the erasure of pictures on the IDs.

“We freely admit that is an issue. Apologies on that,” Alid said. “We can’t answer why this happens because the printing of the ID is coursed through the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas.”

The PSA advised those whose ID picture is erased to go to their office so they can elevate the issue to the central office.

Another issue shrouding the PhilSys registration is the use of fictitious names.

Alid said there are over 400,000 PhilSys registrations being verified by their office. She said that the deduplication process is what’s preventing the PSA from releasing the PhilSys ID to recipients.

“These are usually duplicate demographic and biometric,” Alid said.

She also said there are reports of people cutting the QR code and pasting it to another ID.

As of Jan. 27, 2023, there are 76.2 million Filipinos registered to PhilSys, with 29.9 million IDs already delivered via the Philippine Postal Office and 18.4 million given a digital copy of the ID.