The spotlight on digital identity is cast over almost all places in the world now that have inhabitance. For the channels to exist between citizens and businesses and public entities, strong architecture of technology and serial authentication has to be the foundation for security.
This interview was conducted with Rolando Kattan, President Commissioner of the National Bureau, Registry of Honduras, who represents a small country in Central America where the spotlight regardless is shining bright on digital innovation to enhance citizens’ lives, the economy and bring administration to the cloud in the 21st century.
Honduras is the first nation in the world to have a secured citizen registry database in the cloud which enabled biometric fingerprint authentication to count the votes in last local election.
Working with the UNDP and World Bank, Kattan explains their efforts to digitalise public administration, already delivering a new ID card for citizens and the infrastructure so that citizens can authenticate to systems.
When asked how close Honduras is to achieving a national form of digital identity for everyone, Kattan said “we’re already there”.
Regardless of its physical size, it was fascinating to hear that Honduras is ticking many of the future requirements of the population in terms of digital government. Kattan says he prefers the term of delivering an efficient “automatic government”, rather than digitalising.
Ahead are the likes of Estonia, a country that has fully deployed a system of digital identity and transaction, whereas Honduras is beginning to develop a similar ecosystem.
“We come from a very small country but we say we come from the future!”, he says proudly.
It comes across during the interview that a main driver of growth and productivity for the government in Honduras is having the capability of installing data in the cloud and operating through every institution with biometric authentication. Documents such as birth certificates can be distributed automatically through scanning a digital id in the app to release the document in seconds.
Rolando also touches on compliance being essential in every step of the chain of value.
Questions asked:
1. What is your strategy to establish digital ID infrastructures to increase identity inclusion, and boost economic growth?
2. How close are we to achieving digital identity/ an official form of identity for everyone in society?
3. What sort of approach to innovation are you going to advocate in terms of how we can enhance secure systems, improve collaboration and consumer trust?
4. Why is it important to attend events like Identity Week America?
