Understanding Cost Drivers of Identification Systems
Approximately one billion people globally lack government-recognized identification. As a consequence, they face barriers to accessing critical services and exercising their rights. Robust, inclusive, and responsible foundational identification (ID...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/702641544730830097/Understanding-Cost-Drivers-of-Identification-Systems http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31065 |
| Summary: | Approximately one billion people
globally lack government-recognized identification. As a
consequence, they face barriers to accessing critical
services and exercising their rights. Robust, inclusive, and
responsible foundational identification (ID) systems2 can be
transformative for a country’s development and for the
welfare of its poorest and most vulnerable populations by
enabling financial inclusion, the empowerment of women and
girls, access to basic services, social safety nets, and
political participation. Moreover, at a systemic level,
leapfrogging traditional paper-based approaches in favor of
digital identification systems can generate significant
benefits across the public and private sectors by increasing
efficiency and accountability (chiefly through the reduction
of fraud, leakages, and waste in public programs) as well as
driving innovation in service delivery (through the use of
mobile or digital payments, for instance). As governments
across the globe are implementing new, digital foundational
identification systems or modernizing existing ID programs,
there is an urgent need to develop accurate estimations of
the associated costs. There are a handful of existing
analyses that have attempted to estimate the overall cost of
foundational ID systems: for instance, Gelb and Diofasi Metz
(2018) estimate that it is likely to cost a low income
country roughly 0.6 percent of GDP to build a foundational
ID system, or about $4–11 investment per registrant for
enrolment and credential issuance. The same study cites
figures for a few countries suggesting recurrent costs of
around 0.06–0.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). As
the authors point out however, few data points exist and
these figures may not apply to different types of systems or
to all countries. |
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