Your Emirates ID card may soon double as a labour card, health card or even driving licence — minimising the risk of identity fraud or financial theft, a government official said.
The Emirates Identity Authority is moving to integrate various government-issued identification cards into the national ID card in the future, said Ali Al Khouri, Director-General of the authority, on the sidelines of the Cards and Payments Middle East conference on Tuesday.
“The ID card is an identity management infrastructure. We have a vision to make it the primary ID document in the country,” Al Khouri. “We will see some convergence of existing cards into the ID card.”
The authority is in talks with the traffic department to integrate the Emirates ID card and driving licence, he added.
Asked if such convergence of personal information onto one card could prevent security breaches such as the recent ATM heist, he said: “It would minimise such risks and fraud cases.”
Asked about the dangers of pooling all this data onto one card, he said information is not stored on the chip and that any data on the chip is signed digitally by the Emirates ID certification authority. “It’s next to impossible to fake the identity card on the chip.”
After enrolling more than 99 per cent of the population with the Emirates ID Authority, the next step is an initiative to verify and authenticate the identity when people use government services online, Al Khouri said.
“The government and private sector need to redesign their systems to plug in to this,” he said.
