It is really incredibly mind-boggling that, as a country, we have not fully grasped the opportunities for law and order that ICT technologies present. In this age of supercomputers/ fast, powerful servers and massive databases, so many official documents are still stored on paper. These include medical records, land records, car ownership and personnel files. Significant steps are being taken in specific areas by the relevant line ministries. But there needs to be a comprehensive and cohesive approach.
T&T is a microstate with a minuscule population. To put this in perspective, consider that New Delhi is about the same area as Trinidad but its population is approximately 18 times larger. India has a population of 1.26 billion, some 1,000 times more than that of T&T.
Such a large population did not deter it from initiating a national biometric national identity card system.
The data in traditional ID cards includes a picture of the person, date of birth and some physical attributes like height and the colour of the eyes. These can be duplicated and do change through aging or design. The use of coloured contact lenses and hair loss, etc, can significantly alter a person’s appearance. In biometric-based ID cards, unique and fixed characteristics are used. These include fingerprints, iris scan and DNA sequence.