PNG prioritises biometric voting and national ID to reform electoral processes

Work is underway in Papua New Guinea to improve the country's election process.

Violence surrounding the 2022 national election was among the worst seen in the country, with the poor state of the electoral rolls blamed for much of it.

A special parliamentary committee has recommended dozens of changes, including security measures, the introduction of electronic voting, and the participation of women.

Discussions headed by the Minister of Administrative Services, Richard Masere, have focused on how to make the National Identity Card (NID) available to everyone and the institution of biometric voting.

Masere spoke about these initiatives with RNZ Pacific's correspondent in PNG Scott Waide.

(The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)

Richard Masere: Firstly, the key priorities of the government is to work towards reforming our current electoral processes. Best place to start is the common roll. So to make sure that our common roll is accurate, to some degree, is that we need to have reliable data. And there's been queries and questions, and even based on the recommendation of the parliamentary committee, there's been concerns about the electoral roll being inflated.

So what we are doing, going forward, is that our population count will provide the basis of us knowing where the numbers are in terms of; by family, by village, by ward, by LLG, by district and by province. So that will give us a basis of then relooking at the common roll. But to make the common roll even more robust and give it some credibility, we need to go back and have a data source, that data source will provide that robust and trustworthy detail.

We find that NID [PNG's National Identification Card system] currently is the only government sanctioned system that we believe can be used equally as a form of the electoral roll.

But to make it credible, of course, we have to roll out a program out in 2025 where those that have not been included in NID must be captured. But of course, it will come back in our funding from the National Government. So what we want to do is that we will roll out a program starting next year, January, is that those that haven't been given NID cards, we use the population data as our guide to go and make sure that those people who have not been given NID cards are issued with NID cards.

Because if you're going to migrate to a common roll that provides photo and name, the NID would provide that basis for that. So this is sort of a migration process between several key government agencies, which is the census data, making sure that we grow the NID card system, properly funded, so that we can register all Papua New Guineans and then by 2027 you can pass that data, from 18 years and above, you can pass the data to the Electoral Commission and say 'this is your common roll, based on photos, face, name.

And then they can then use that as the basis to provide the election knowing that they have a more credible common roll. You know, in the past, people would just walk and give their names, and they could have different names, but having that NID only gives one name, one person, one vote. So that's sort of our progress to make sure that we develop the common roll.

And then, of course, we are also looking at the possibility of migrating away from paper voting to a biometric voting system. So we had a look at the system that's currently been used in India, where you go in, select a keypad where you want to vote a candidate. You press that keypad, it registers the number. It provides a receipt. You're happy with the receipt. You also put that receipt into a holding box that comes with that system.

So in the event people may query the numbers, they can always go back and recheck the papers to make sure that the numbers corroborate. But the good thing about it is that it eliminates paper counting in a central location. So what they do is, they take this electronic system back, they retrieve the data, add the data, and then within a day of registering the data, a candidate is declared within one day. We want to go away from these two weeks, three

weeks of counting, and then you find that, you know, during that process, papers can be moved around and so we want some integrity in the way we also count and declare our candidates. So these are some of the reforms and changes we are goling for.

Scott Waide: The NID system is still cumbersome. They have the ability to register via biometrics.

RM: Well, at the moment, NID is a project, not a division of the government. And it's not a entity of the PNG Civil Registry. It's an independent body created by an act of parliament. And it is a project, not a division, where the employees are funded through a government structured salary.

So, every year, through Department of Planning, they provide 10 million kina, which is set aside for that project. But NID employs close to 500 young Papua New Guineans, and the salary alone is at 13 million. If the PIP program funding is only 10 million, we already 3 million behind. Then we have to go and buy NID cards. We have to go and buy printing inks. We have to go and pay office rentals.

We have to pay for mission breakdowns, fuel, every other thing that comes. So just to run NID alone, it's around 25 million kina, but with only 10 million, given they are already on the back foot in terms of how they manage that.

We are now looking at reforming that structure. NID will be brought under the PNG Civil and Identity Registry, under which NID will become a division within the PNG Civil and Registry Identity. There's already a structure that is with Department of Personnel Management.

It's going through the process of getting approved. Once approved, all those young Papua New Guineans that are employed under NID will be shifted onto the government payroll, so that we eliminate those other additional costs that they incur. So that's why, when there is a backlog of NID cards, is not because they can't print the card. It's because of the fact that just running the that particular agency is quite excessive in terms of it cost about 25 million to run it, but with only 10 million funding, it's impossible to do everything. We are working around it to fix all those issues.

But once we fix that, starting 2025 we are confident that we will get the appropriate funding through the Budget, and then we'll be able to implement all this, make sure all the backlogs of IDs that are still pending to be cleared out, and then also roll out the programs to make sure that we capture every property on NID

SW: You've mentioned about the technological limitations in terms of network coverage and all that there are technologies already available, I mean, Starlink and others that can be deployed in smaller units. What's taking such a long time?

RM: Most telecom companies, when they go through conferences or when they're discharging their coverage, they're always saying that they have about 70% coverage over Papua New Guinea and we're not challenging them. But we found out in the recent census that at any given point in time we only have up to 30% coverage, and most of the places that we are unable to upload data while they are conducting the census is purely because of network coverage.

They have to bring all the data back that they collected in different locations, back to the central location, which is maybe in the town or the cities. And then it is at the central location that they have proper network connectivity. And they then upload the data to the main framework of the census network system. So they are able to do that from a central location.

So we worked it out, and we looked at all the variables, and we established that at any given point in time we only have 30% coverage, and most of that is to either to do with weather restrictions, or there's no fuel in the generator that operates the tower or solar panels have been vandalised, or some issue that prevents the tower to operate fully for us to be able to utilise.

If we want to migrate in this space, we have to look at other infrastructures that are there available but must meet the laws must be legally accepted in the country before we migrate to those particular technology. There is technology out there, but of course, there are stringent rules within Papua New that must be followed.

And once companies like Starlink, if they meet those requirements and come in, that will be one of the improvements in terms of connectivity, because it's directly satellite connectivity. That will also help in our process to move into that biometric space.