In January 2010, a massive earthquake struck Haiti. In order to help the rebuilding process and improve the existing public service infrastructure, fresh information about the characteristics of the population became utterly necessary.

In November 2012, the Government of Haiti and Smartmatic partnered to modernize Haiti’s Civil Registry and Identity System.

This project, conceived as a knowledge and technology transfer program, endowed Haiti not only with state-of-the-art technology, but also with all the required know-how to continue developing its civil registry and identity system.

Scope

In 2012 Smartmatic joined forces with Haiti’s National Identification Office (ONI) to modernize the civil registry and identity system of the country.

As a result of this project ONI was allowed to produce, print and to hand out identity cards and birth certificates for Haitian citizens.

All the data gathered during the registration phase of the project was stored in a database that now encompasses biographic and biometric information of the entire population.

Technology

The solution tailored by Smartmatic to help Haiti build a world-class Civil Registry and Identity System comprised:

Two Datacenters: one primary and one for contingency. The primary Datacenter hosts:

• Centralized Identity Management Application: Handles the end-to-end management and administration of the identification lifecycle process, including enrollment, renewal of expired cards, verification and confirmation of citizens.
• Centralized database: Holds every citizen’s biographic and biometric information backed up in the contingency datacenter.
• A web application for identification services and interactions with citizens. A link to the web application integrates into ONI’s current website, and through it, Haiti’s citizens can monitor and follow up the status of the identification transactions performed at ONI offices.
• E-Learning platform: To help train personnel working for the project.
• Real time communication between the Centralized database and registration units deployed in the field and foreign missions.

• Printing center: Smartmatic helped ONI modernize its ID card printing center in order to increase the security and durability features of the new IDs.
• National data warehouse: Smartmatic created a national data warehouse where all the data, new and old, is kept securely.
• Warehouse and Support center: Smartmatic set up a warehouse where all the registration unites were prepared prior their deployment.
• National Support center (NSC): The NSC allows authorities to monitor the deployment of the Identity Management solution and to attend any incident either with the enrollment process or the equipment.
• Training of ONI’s personnel: Because this is a knowledge transfer project, Smartmatic provided extensive training to ONI’s personnel to ensure the State of Haiti can make the best use of the modern platform installed.
• PARmobiles: Smartmatic supplied 700 portable registry units specifically designed to capture biographic and biometric data.

Benefits of a biometric registry

• Improves access to human rights: Thanks to the fresh and updated Biometric Civil Registry, all Haitians living home or abroad can be recognized as such.
• Provides identity documents: The information gathered during enrollment allows authorities to conveniently provide citizens with modern, secure identification documents.
• Leads to better services: Both government and international agencies can now have an accurate, efficient tool to better assess Haiti’s needs and to plan accordingly.
• Easy to use: Powerful hardware and a friendly interface allow authorities to audit, update and clean the databases efficiently.