Dr. BAWUMIA CANNOT TAKE CREDIT FOR GHANA CARD
Dr Bawumia paid a visit to NIA in 2017, along with the current NCA Boss Mr Anokye and some CEOs. As Head of Systems at the time, it was my responsibility to take him and his entourage through the NIA systems. That is, where we started from, where we are now, and where we plan to go.
Below is a picture of me explaining the systems we had in place and how we are transitioning from the old centralised system, which only captured two fingerprints, to a new system that will capture all ten fingerprints of an applicant, Iris, phone numbers for SIM registration, and issue cards immediately.
As part of my briefing, I informed Dr. Bawumia and his team that we needed to transition to instant issuance printing because the previous system was expensive because it was centralised printing. That is, we register Ghanaians, bring their data to the NIA office, process it, print it, and return to the field to distribute it to applicants. However, with the new system, cards would be issued immediately.
Again, I informed Dr. Bawumia and his team that the old system, which had approximately 16 million Ghanaians’ data, had been successfully migrated to the new system. This is to ensure data consistency and integrity. That is why if you register now and change your Date of Birth, and it does not match what you registered with in the previous system, it will be flagged for investigation.
Dr. Bawumia and his team were informed that the new system had completed the Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) in December 2016 and was now ready for the final acceptance test, the Site Acceptance Test (SAT), prior to its launch.
Dr. Bawumia and his team were also informed that the new system is a public-private partnership (PPP) between Margins Group and the NIA, with the first contract to pilot instant card issuance completed in 2013 as part of the FIMS project.
It is therefore surprising that Dr. Bawumia, in his lecture yesterday, took credit for the new system while condemning the previous government for doing nothing. That is obvious DISHONESTY. In my next post, I will share email exchanges between NIA and the Margins group as we migrated old system data to new ones.
The only thing they have added is the Digital address field on the forms. That was even done wrongly. Go to NIA now an give them any digital address and the system will pick so far as it is consistent with the format of the addressing system.
The next post will show the documentary evidence.
