Continuing efforts are being made to assure the Jamaican public that personal data stored under the National Identification System (NIDS) will be secure.

NIDS Programme Director Warren Vernon, as he addressed the fifth virtual town hall staged by the joint select committee on the National Identification & Registration Act, 2020, on Wednesday (January 27). said persons will have control over the disclosure or release of their identity information.

“Once you appear in a private-sector or a government entity, the first step of this process is that you must give permission for your information to be disclosed or for your identity to be verified,” Vernon said.

“Once that is done, you will punch in your pin, because you need to punch in your pin to authenticate the transaction. The system will store a log of that event. You will also be notified and the information will be disclosed to the entity.”

Vernon noted that accredited organisations, such as financial institutions, will be able to connect to the system to verify the identity of a client.

He stressed that these institutions will not have access to the client’s personal information.

“Once they go to the [NIDS] authority’s website, and type in the National Identification Number and the information that is on the face of the card, they will get a match or a mismatch,” he explained.

“The system won’t reveal or disclose any information at all. All it will confirm really is, ‘yes, this card is in the Government’s database’.”