Sri Lanka launches Unique Digital Identity Project to streamline identification system

The project aims to collect biographic and biometric data, including facial, iris, and fingerprint information, which will be stored in a centralized system.

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State Minister of Technology Kanaka Herath has announced that the Indo-Sri Lanka Joint Project for the Sri Lanka Unique Digital Identity Project (SL-UDI) is currently underway. The project aims to collect biographic and biometric information, including facial, iris, and fingerprint data, which will be stored in a centralised system for the purpose of issuing identification cards. 

The minister made this statement during a recent Ministerial Consultative Committee on Technology meeting. The discussion also focused on digitalising all documents under a single identification number, starting from birth certificates. However, the implementation of this proposal has been temporarily halted due to operational issues. 

The committee suggested bypassing the digitisation of past documents and instead starting fresh with a new batch to expedite the process. Several Members of Parliament participated in the committee meeting.