Armenia`s government to invite tender for new biometric passport system

ArmInfo. Armenia's government intends to invite a tender for a new biometric passport system.

As Minister of Internal Affairs Vahe Ghazaryan noted when presenting the draft decision, currently the IT infrastructure and assets for issuing passports and identity cards are under the jurisdiction of the Migration and Citizenship Service of the Ministry of Internal

Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of  Armenia. He recalled that from February 15, 2023, citizens will be issued old-style passports, without electronic media (the issuance of biometric passports has been suspended). The current level of implementation of electronic identification solutions (including those available through identification cards) is insufficient to achieve the ambitions of the digital society and economic reforms, the minister noted.

"Due to the fact that infrastructures do not meet modern requirements for identification in the digital environment, significant problems arise related to the quality of service provision in connection with the issuance and provision of travel documents and identity documents," Ghazaryan said.

The solution to the problem, according to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, is not in increasing human resources, but in introducing simple digital solutions.

"As a result of the project, a private partner will be attracted in the format of a public-private partnership, which will bring the best experience and knowledge into the process of issuing travel and identity documents in Armenia in order to solve the problems faced by end users," said the Minister of Internal Affairs business

Documents and databases for them will have to comply with the international security requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization ICAO (for identifying citizens at airports) and the European Union's eIDAS identification standards.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, in turn, noted that the strategic goal of the government is to create a digital profile of a citizen. According to him, in the future there will be a need to create a mechanism that allows identifying a person in the digital space, "to make sure that the person who presents himself as such in any legal relationship is exactly the person he appears to be."

After the identification stage, as the Prime Minister indicated, it will be possible to proceed to the identification of an electronic signature, and all operations that are performed using a passport can be done from a phone via the Internet.

The next step, according to the Prime Minister, should be the acceptance and issuance of Mobile ID. "This means that in practice, after receiving an identification card, a person must keep the card at home so as not to lose it, and must be given the opportunity to use it through a mobile application," he emphasized.

"The biometric passport will be used as a foreign passport in all cases where it is not possible to use an identification card as a travel document. For example, in case of crossing the border (by land) of Georgia, it is enough to have an identification card with you, but to travel to other countries you will need a biometric passport," said Nikol Pashinyan.