There are many reasons why countries, small and large, are reviewing the needs for national identification cards. Many of the reasons have to do with immigration, border control and some are simply economic. When considering national identification cards for a country, it’s fairly simple to understand the perceived need to clearly identify someone’s nationality for reasons from employment to citizenship benefits. Even when reviewing who should receive medical or any other service offered by a government to its citizens and to protect these services so they are not abused by individuals whose citizenship is with another country.
The only form of national identification is a printed piece of paper in many countries, and because of this many of these nations are reviewing their possibilities. These documents are simple to forge since they don’t contain a picture or other identifying marks other than being the person holding the document. Reducing the abuse of services and controlling costs is reason enough to implement a national photo ID card and database. Because of these needs and many others it is apparent that some of the information on the identification cards would include characteristics of the holder such as height, weight sex and eye color. Some nations have included items such as retinal scan information and finger prints into the national database and into the identification cards themselves.
Some of the countries that are entertaining or beginning this process do not have an up to date account on its current residents or even census information on their citizens. Implementing a national identification card into a country such as this allows for many other needed benefits, such as tracking the activity of its citizens when it comes to border crossings, criminal records, government employment history or military service. Presently many of these countries have databases to track these items, but most are independent of each other. Creating a national ID card would allow the merging of all of these databases into a common solution that would allow for a much simpler identification and review of an individual’s history.
As governments review these types of requirements, it has become in many cases a task for outsourcing. For many nations, undertaking the monumental feat of photographing, capturing information and providing ID cards to every citizen is too large for governments to handle efficiently. There have been a few companies providing solutions for nations and one of them is FullIdentity.com. This organization has been providing photo identification cards for individuals for about seven years and have created solutions that incorporate much more than simply providing cards. In many cases solutions have been developed for countries that are not only easy to implement but also provide an economic benefit for the countries implementing them. Simply put, when outsourcing the identification card needs of a country to a provider such as FullIdentity.com, the costs are less expensive than they would be if a nation took on the burden of developing a solution internally. Because of the discounted expense, the country can charge the citizens less for the ID cards than they would if the nation was passing the expense along directly to the resident. This would still leave a financial margin that would be paid to the government.
It is hard to find an economic reason for a government not to implement a national identification card system. Advocates will shout that “big brother” is stripping them of their rights and privacy; but shouldn’t someone be watching our criminal records, military service and border crossings? Doesn’t a government have the responsibility to ensure that only their citizens are receiving benefits from their own country or should anyone be allowed to receive these benefits when their citizenship belongs to another nation?
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