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IT’S All IN THE CARDS
Imagine... a small plastic card that functions as your national identity card, driver’s license, ATM card, healthcare provider card and education certificates. Sounds like science fiction? Moustafa Samaha, chairman of the Egyptian Association for Smart Cards Industry & Application (EASCIA), can assure you it is not. He says so-called “smart identity cards” are destined to make obsolete existing national ID cards, storing volumes of encrypted personal data on a silicon chip embedded in a small plastic card. The new technology could mean less dependency on paperwork, and less time wasted acquiring documentation for everything from vehicle registration renewals to doctor’s visits.
BY RÉHAB EL-BAKRY
Moustafa Samaha is convinced of one thing: if Egypt is to become truly integrated in the global community it will have “go smart,” and fast. The chairman of the Egyptian Association for Smart Cards Industry & Application (EASCIA), an NGO dedicated to promoting smart card technology, believes these small, data-packed cards could radically change the way Egyptians store and utilize personal data. And with much of the rest of the world already adopting the technology, Egypt could sink further into a deep well of paperwork if it doesn’t act soon. “[This] is an opportunity for us to make a technological step forward,” he says. “Technology can sometimes be used to make a cultural change, so it’s an opportunity for us to change our community.”
Soft-spoken yet articulate, Samaha is adept at explaining the intricate workings of highly specialized IT components in simple terms. A smart card is, in essence, a small plastic card with an embedded chip that can process information and can be used for identification or financial transactions. Most Egyptians are already familiar with them as payphone cards, mobile SIM cards or newer credit cards, but Samaha sees enormous potential to adapt these applications to broader, more ambitious projects.
He explains that a smart card can be designed to serve as an all-encompassing national identification card – securely storing the data of a citizen’s birth certificate, driver’s license, education certificates and work-related documentation. The card could contain information about the citizen’s medical record and healthcare provider, as well as biometric data such as fingerprint scans.
With such a card, Samaha explains, a citizen would have the relevant data to complete employment documents, renew their car registration or receive healthcare benefits without having to make exhausting trips to various organizations and government authorities to collect documents.
A silicon trend
The technology is quite simple (though it took a German rocket scientist to invent it), but the possible applications are endless. Samaha has over 20 years of experience working with smart cards and is an outspoken proponent of their use. After completing an engineering degree at Helwan University, he traveled to Germany in 1986 to further his studies in electrical engineering at Bochum University. He was later recruited by ITT Semi Conductors, the German subsidiary of the international telecommunications giant ITT. His decade at the firm had him involved in research and development of integrated circuits and smart cards, and testing their various applications in business and industry.
Samaha joined Siemens in 1997, which at the time was the world’s leader in the manufacture of chips for smart cards, commanding a 40-percent share of the world market. He later moved to Giesecke & Devrient (G&D), a German company specializing in solutions using the chips in various sectors, and the firm contracted by the Egyptian government in the late 1990s to transform the national identity cards from paper to the bar-coded plastic, more secure format currently used. “At that time, the new identity cards being issued by [the government of] Egypt had no chips,” he says. “They had a lot of security features compared to the old ID cards, but neither the local nor international communities were ready for smart identity cards.”
But a transformation was taking place in the East. Asian countries, led by Malaysia, were emerging as the new powerhouses of smart card applications, supplanting France and Germany, where the technology was first developed. “It’s amazing how the world changes,” Samaha remarks. “It’s very important to have an open and broad observation of how [trends] evolve around the world to adopt or learn from other communities in their experience and adapt them to Egypt to the benefit of our community and the Arab world.”
In 2001, Samaha had his chance to do just that as he returned to Egypt to head up G&D Egypt, the company’s regional office for Middle East and North Africa. By that time, Egypt’s IT industry was beginning to take shape. The newly created Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) had put impetus into the development of Egypt’s IT sector and the creation of an information society. The establishment of EASCIA emerged out of this momentum.
The NGO’s creation was first called for by Tarek Kamel, minister of communications and information technology, during a conference in late 2004. Kamel envisioned the NGO as an independent body loosely affiliated with MCIT working to communicate the latest developments in smart card technology and uses to the local IT community.
For Samaha, who was selected to head EASCIA two years ago, the government’s support was essential, as it gave credibility to the NGO’s activities and recommendations. “But with this support comes enormous responsibility,” he says. EASCIA’s members – which include nine corporations that use the technology and seven individuals whose businesses are on the supply or application side of smart cards – are all very much aware of the role they play in increasing the public’s understanding of smart card technology. The members are working to demonstrate the benefits of smart cards and introduce them to the Egyptian market.
Virtual identity
Smart cards are a tool for greater efficiency and less paperwork. Given the level of bureaucracy in Egypt, their proposed adoption as national identity cards stands to make an enormous impact on society. Malaysia, a pioneer in this field, has been issuing smart national identity cards with eight applications, as well as electronic passports, for nearly a decade. Closer to home, Bahrain began issuing smart national identity cards for its citizens three years ago.
Egypt may still be a few years off, but the government is already experimenting with similar smart card applications. One pilot project launched in Suez Governorate uses subsidy smart cards to monitor and account for the distribution of subsidized food products to poor families. Under the Family Card Project, cards are issued to limited-income families entitled to food subsidies. The smart cards contain data on the names, ages, incomes and subsidy eligibility of each family member. Upon purchasing subsidized food at registered outlets, the amount of the purchase is deducted from the individual’s monthly quota, which is recharged automatically at the end of the month.
The project is now fully operational in Suez Governorate, and the government is preparing to expand it to include Beni Suef, Monofiya, Port Said, Sharqiya and Sohag governorates, as well as the City of Luxor and parts of Cairo, later this year. Officials expect the project to cover the rest of Egypt within four years.
Samaha, whose organization was called upon to help increase public awareness of the Family Card Project, envisions more uses for the subsidy smart cards. He says the same card could be used to store an individual’s healthcare information and educational profile. This would allow the Ministry of Social Solidarity to monitor that children from poor families are receiving immunizations or are starting school on time.
And once the cards are issued, applications could be added or removed as needed. Application upgrades could transform the smart subsidy card into a smart national identity card or vice versa – without the need to reissue new cards. But while a single smart card could replace the dozens of plastic cards and jotted-down numbers people carry in their wallets – and save them tedious trips to various organizations and agencies to collect documents – the big question is whether the public will accept the idea of having so much personal information on a single card.
Samaha says privacy concerns are understandable, but smart card technology has been designed to ensure that personal information does not fall into the wrong hands. “The data is stored in an encrypted form so no one can read it unless they have the privilege to access [this information],” he explains. “The communication between the card and the outside world is also done in an encrypted way to improve security and prevent data theft – all to the benefit of the cardholder.”
Take, for example, a smart identity card containing data of an individual’s education, car licenses, criminal records, education information and health information. The information is stored in an encrypted format, with each data set containing its own permission, retrievable only by those authorized officials possessing the correct Tivoli Access Manager (TAM) or data accessing key.
Education officials, for instance, would only have access to data pertaining to the individual’s education, while health officials would have another TAM that gives them access solely to health-related data. “This is for the protection of the privacy of the individual,” explains Samaha. “[There is built-in] technology protection for the data so that it is only communicated to the people who should have access to it.”
One of the biggest challenges in turning the smart national identity card vision into reality is building a massive database to store the personal data of 75 million Egyptians. The storage space is the easy part. Getting the various government bodies to agree on a data format, and communicate with the database using encrypted protocols – well, even Samaha has his doubts. Moreover, several million Egyptians don’t even have birth certificates, national IDs or education records. They are simply off the radar.
“It’s a big challenge,” he admits, “but [we] can make it happen.” He says the Ministry of State for Administrative Development is the logical starting point, as one of its main functions is to upgrade the administrative backbone of the country and develop tools to modernize public services.
But Samaha is also a realist. He recognizes that such an ambitious undertaking will not come cheap. While he is unsure what the cost of a nationwide smart identity card project would run, he is certain that whoever picks up the tab will be looking for ways to recoup the cost.
There are three basic payment scenarios. In one model, already implemented in some countries with high disposable incomes, citizens pay a fee that not only covers the cost of issuing the card, but also the back office support needed to implement the smart identity card program. In other cases, particularly in developing countries, the government and citizens share the cost of the cards and administration. In a third model, already practiced in Bahrain, the government picks up the tab for the entire project. “In the case of Egypt, I don’t think that a model has been developed simply because the only [national] smart card-based project thus far has been for the poor, and they obviously can’t pay for the technology,” Samaha says.
But the fact that smart cards are already familiar to much of the public in the form of payphone cards and mobile SIM cards is a good start. People are becoming familiar with the technology and will be less resistant to the roll out of new applications. “We can’t shy away from technology as the rest of the world goes forward,” he says. “We need to accept that the way to deal with technology is through more technology and to embrace it. We should never shy away from it... [or else] we will just be left behind.”
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