Government Identity Enrollment Sees Increasing Decentralization to Improve Service Delivery

The Zimbabwean government recently commissioned a passport office and bio-enrolment center in the remote town of Hwange. The Hwange office is the second district registry, following Chitungwiza, to accommodate ePassport enrolment services away from centralized facilities, with plans are underway for three similar centers to be opened later in 2022. For Zimbabwean citizens who live in towns like Hwange, which is around 100 km from the nearest large city, travel to centralized facilities is difficult and accessibility to enrolment centers is limited. As described by the Zimbabwean Minister of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage in explaining the move to decentralize enrolment facilities, it is hugely important that citizens are able to access national documents with ease, and the decentralization of services by Zimbabwe is one of the programs that has had the most far-reaching impact on people’s lives by enabling this. It grants accessibility to those who otherwise would not be capable of government enrolment, empowering local communities and driving modernization.

The decentralization of services by Zimbabwe reflects the wider ecosystem, where ABI Research notes a trend of growth of remote solutions related to enrolment. However, much of the enrolment for government programs on a global scale is still enacted within centralized facilities, offering high levels of security and an efficient process for those who are within a reasonable distance. However, such as the case in Zimbabwe, and similarly in developing economies with rural populations with limited access to government services, deploying remote enrolment solutions forms part of a strategy to increase citizen registration in government programs, enabling a stronger foundational identity infrastructure. This, in turn, yields a multitude of benefits for the country, as well as the citizens themselves in enabling administrative processes and developing channels of communication between citizens and government. The necessity of a strong identity infrastructure is ever-growing, so the impetus for governments to push harder for developed identity systems follows. Countries like Zimbabwe are moving toward decentralized centers, growing the market for remote enrolment solutions relative to centralized ones.

As opposed to the enrolment equipment typically installed in centralized enrolment centers, including high-value multi-biometric capture devices equipped to deal with a variety of enrolment scenarios, such as enrolment kiosks, remote solutions are seeing comparative growth of demand and implementation. This consists of lower-value enrolment devices, including remote enrolment suitcases and jump kits, often modular in design and customized for a particular project. These will also generally be required in higher volume for deployment in a greater number of locations. Vendors should note an increase in demand and reflect this accordingly in product portfolios and marketing messages, and place further emphasis and prioritization on decentralized solutions. Furthermore, while the trend of enrolment decentralization manifests as increased remote solutions at present, in the future, it will be mobile enrolment that is turned to, as centralized enrolment is moved away from. Currently, inhibitors exist, including the unsupervised process increasing security concerns, preventing mobile enrolment from seeing standalone implementation (though pre-enrolment and document reissuance are possible in some circumstances). However, mobile enrolment is a real possibility on the horizon and when it sees adoption, this could potentially be on a large scale and form a new norm. Vendors should consider the future prospect of major mobile implementation, gearing up research and development toward preparing solutions to be well-positioned once this technology takes off.