Rethinking The NID: Inclusion, Data Justice, and Tech Solutionism

[00:00:12] - [Speaker 0]
Namaste and welcome to Pods by PEI, a policy discussion series brought to you by Policy Entrepreneurizing. My name is Ridesh Sakota. In today's episode, we have PI colleague Husi in conversation with Neha Gauthun to explore Nepal's national ID program within the context of digitization in governance. Neha Gauthun is a feminist indigenous human rights activist. She currently coordinates the knowledge generation program at Body and Data, where she is involved in research on digitizing identity in Nepal.

[00:00:46] - [Speaker 0]
Previously, she worked in the field of digital rights with a primary focus on children. Neha has a master's degree in human rights and democratization from Manila University Philippines. Khushi and Neha trace the development of National ID program, highlighting key actors and events that have come under scrutiny. The two then evaluate risks and vulnerabilities in the project and digitization of governance in general with a particular focus on inclusion, data security, data justice, and tech solutionism. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

[00:01:29] - [Speaker 1]
Hi, Neha. Welcome to Pods by PEI. How are you feeling today?

[00:01:33] - [Speaker 2]
I'm good, yeah okay okay.

[00:01:35] - [Speaker 1]
Alright, we're so glad to have you here to discuss the intertwining of governance and technology focusing particularly on Nepal's National Identity Card project. You are a part of the research team at Body and Data, which has been actively studying how this process has unfolded and its future. It's an ongoing research, and after completing the first phase, you have looked into the interests and implications behind this, project. Now speaking about the project itself and its perception in the public sphere, I think that the program has spread widely, but the policy discourse still lacks a clear understanding and this critical evaluation that it so deserves. So when we talk about NID, we talk about it so superficially, and we really haven't taken the time to evaluate the consequences it might have.

[00:02:31] - [Speaker 1]
So I'm really excited to get into the details of this matter. And to begin with, I want to ask a very basic question, which is how do you define the digitization of governance? What is this phenomena and how are we seeing it unfold in Nepal? You know, what are some of the digitization projects that are being undertaken or have been undertaken by Nepal and why did you pick up the case of national identity so specifically for your research?

[00:02:59] - [Speaker 2]
Thank you, Kushi. I think to start off with what digitization of governance is, let's understand what digitization is. So digitization is a process where there is conversion of analog or manual information, a digital form. And if it's done within the governance structure, then it's called digitization of governance. And also, in Nepal, like you see a lot of digitization projects going on, as you've mentioned.

[00:03:26] - [Speaker 2]
And the governments have been saying that it's there because you need good transparency, accountability, you know, controlling crime rates or like corruption rates and that's what they've said for the need of digitization of governance. And I think with that objective as well, Nepal has slowly started to turn into digital Nepal, where we've seen a lot of digitization projects such as a case example like what you've mentioned, the national identity card. In short, I'll be saying it as an ID card. Then you have the e passport. You also have the smart driving license.

[00:04:08] - [Speaker 2]
There's this Nagarik app and also digitization of data of land revenue office among many others. Yeah, I think these are some of the examples of the projects.

[00:04:19] - [Speaker 1]
And why was NID so specifically important to you?

[00:04:23] - [Speaker 2]
I think as an organization, Body and Data works to enhance understanding and formation of digital rights among marginalized populations. Especially we work with women, queer folks, persons with disabilities, and a lot of people who are structurally, politically marginalized within the within the country, right? And I think National Identity Card, the NID card research was a scope within our organization because we've been researching about digital rights and what are the scenarios in context to Nepal and how it impacts the marginalized populations. And I think the scope and the objective fell well within our organization. And that's why we did this research on digitization of identities in Nepal.

[00:05:16] - [Speaker 1]
All right. So although the implementation of the NID came into full swing sometime last year in 2022, the program actually has been long wide by the Nepali government. So to begin, to dive into this project, can you give us a brief overview of the development of the National ID program in Nepal? You know, underlining when this project started and what are the different events that delayed its path to the full fruition that we see today?

[00:05:47] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. The development of National Identity Card project, the program in itself, actually started in 2010. But the implementation was halted because there were no relevant legislations and policies relating to the card in itself. And it was only in 2015 after the promulgation of Constitution of Nepal where the Department of Civil Registration started to develop information management system for data storage. And after that, there came along a lot of other legislations.

[00:06:22] - [Speaker 2]
There were three main legislations relating to NID card and vital registration. The first one is the NID card and civil registration act, which was in 02/1976. Then it was the regulation, which was in 02/1977, and then the procedures relating to the card, which was in 02/1977. So you can see, like, without proper legislations, the implementation was in halt. And so the program in itself did not start right away in 2010.

[00:06:57] - [Speaker 1]
And we will come back to the start of the program because there have been quite some contestations around that. But for now I want to focus on something very basic but I think this is something that most of us don't know which is the process of creation of the DID and when I'm talking about the process I mean the back end processing. What journey does the data travel from its first collection to the final electronic card that we receive? As you do this, maybe you can also list the key actors involved in sharing and running such a program. And particularly in Nepal, what groups and individuals have been at the forefront in this?

[00:07:40] - [Speaker 1]
That's

[00:07:41] - [Speaker 2]
very interesting, you know, because like, as you were saying, what's the overall process of the data? To be very honest, we don't know. Because we don't know where our data is going, right? The biometric data, which is like a personal and sensitive data of an individual, the process is not there. I mean, to say, like, the process in itself is unknown to the individuals.

[00:08:05] - [Speaker 2]
I think there are some information within the government as well about the data process. But like, we don't know where the data is going. We just know that a French company called Idemia has that data. We don't know how long is our data being retained. We don't know if it's going to be deleted or not, if it's going to be shared with other third party companies or not.

[00:08:31] - [Speaker 2]
So a lot of these informations have not been shared with the individuals or the end users, especially those who are the ones to get services. Yeah. And I think talking to and answering to your next question about like who the authors are within the NID program. Who the active players are? Yeah, who the active players are, like they, the government is the first active player as you can see.

[00:09:00] - [Speaker 2]
And especially within the government, it's the NID card and civil registration department. Then there are local actors like the district administration office, the local representatives. There are government contracted data collectors, the end users, of course, communities like us. And I think we should not miss out the tech companies and the multilateral companies, such as the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank as well, who are actively playing a role in the implementation of NID in Nepal.

[00:09:35] - [Speaker 1]
That's very interesting. I'm glad you came up with the term biometrics or biometrics data because that was something I wanted to head into at the beginning of this conversation so that the rest of the conversation that follows is makes more sense. But to begin with, Nepal is definitely not the first country to digitize. In fact, this effort in digitizing nationality mechanisms began way earlier in the century. However, the collection of biometrics data is particular to a very few handful.

[00:10:09] - [Speaker 1]
Why have some countries refrained from collecting biometrics data? And I think a good point to start this answer would be letting us know the characteristics of biometrics data form.

[00:10:21] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. To say in a very easy way, like you know, it's biometrics, right? Bio, biological. Metrics is a measurement. So biometric is a collection of personal data of, like, physical, psychological, behavioral characteristics of an individual that has undergone, like, some technological processings.

[00:10:47] - [Speaker 2]
And these data confirms your unique identification, your biological data, right? And within these biological data, there are collection of fingerprint. And in Nepal, you do like 10 fingerprint scans, right? Then there's facial recognition under which there are like iris or retina scan. Then there are voice recognition as well, which comes under biometrics, DNA samples, heartbeat sensors.

[00:11:15] - [Speaker 2]
And a lot of these are also counted under biometrics. And these biometric data are captured digitally for identification and later for verification. So talking about why some countries are refraining to use biometrics data within the national identity program, we actually placed Nepal within the global scenario and kind of compared the trend between global North and global South. And what we found out was that, you know, majority of the global South countries had adopted digitized biometrics. And, you can see that a lot of global South countries like South Asia, South America, and African countries as well.

[00:12:02] - [Speaker 2]
And I think the biometric system in itself depends on the centralized data, right, where you store, process, and manage the data of massive individuals, their personal and sensitive data. And because it's connected to the physical body and the metrics of collection of a lot of these intrinsic details without actually paying attention to the cybersecurity capacities because it's centralized. So the data might be able to transfer, might be able to go to third party companies, right? So a lot of these measures are not taking place. So many of these countries actually refrain from that.

[00:12:43] - [Speaker 2]
And to really look into why Nepal has been running towards this is also very interesting because what we found out during our research is also that, you know, there has been rush in digitization of identities, especially in case of Nepal, is because there are multiple reasons. One is, as I was mentioning earlier, that it's connected to the public welfare and delivery of services, right? Now that it's already connected to e passport as well, it's helpful for crime investigation and controlling of corruption that's there. But also, interestingly, the multilateral companies have been pushing this agenda of technology as a solution for a lot of these sociocultural problems in Nepal. And rather than an ID as a concept, as a program coming from the needs of local people, we can also see that actually it's coming from the outside sources like these companies or tech giants who see a lot of profit for pushing this agenda forward in Nepal.

[00:13:50] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. And I think it also feeds into your argument that the fact that the countries that have collected or adopted biometrics collection as a form of digitizing identity typically have very low digital literacy rates. Right? So that's a very ironic trend to be observing. And certainly a lot of very intriguing aspects have come up in your answer, and I think we can sort of elaborate on them as we head on to evaluate the risks and vulnerabilities associated with this project.

[00:14:25] - [Speaker 1]
You mentioned early on in this conversation, and it has been coming up time and again, that one of the flags that the government waves in support of the NID project is its capacity to uphold the tenets of good governance, like transparency, efficiency, inclusion. However, many steps of the implementation process of the project have come under fire for doing the exact opposite. For instance, the program is especially criticized for insufficient tender processes, as a result of which it ultimately violated the Public Procurement Act. So Neha, how do you find the project has deviated from its initial goals of upholding good governance?

[00:15:12] - [Speaker 2]
So to talk about deviation from initial goals of good governance, I'd like to go on to what I was talking earlier on about different legislations that came along with the NID card implementation, right? And I won't go deep dive into what these legislations are or what are the articles within that. But something that we would like to highlight is that even though the pilot program in Panchar District started in 2018, the NID card and civil registration act was passed only in 2020, which is like two years after the initial pilot project, right? So you can see that the NID is not just a question of government's false agenda of good governance, but you can see that it's also linked with what the intentions and what the interests are of the government. And talking about informed consent, you see that the information flow and transparency are one of the major components of good governance.

[00:16:19] - [Speaker 2]
But according to our research, that has not been seen. That was completely opposite because what we found out was that there was lack of informed consent among the end users. Especially during the data collection time, a lot of the individuals shared that they did not know about where the data is being stored or what are the security measures that government would take if their privacy is violated. And there were also inadequate information dissemination about NID's usage. Or people even didn't know about whether the card in itself is being used for other services.

[00:17:01] - [Speaker 2]
Like I was talking about the centralization of database and its connection with the other services, right? End users were unaware of that. And also, implications of what if the data would be leaked. So a lot of these these informations were not transparent from the government side to the communities, which shows that there has been a deviation by the government with regards to transparency and good governance.

[00:17:40] - [Speaker 0]
Namaste, dear listeners. This is Ridesh Sapkota from Policy Entrepreneurizing. We're absolutely thrilled to announce that PodsbyPI is celebrating its first year anniversary. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our participants and supporters who have been instrumental in making this journey a success. Your contributions have been invaluable in promoting insightful conversations and meaningful policy discussions.

[00:18:05] - [Speaker 0]
Thank you for being part of this incredible journey. But wait, there's more. We are not stopping here. We are gearing up for year two with a whole lineup of exciting topics that are sure to spark even more insightful conversations and discussions. Again, thank you for being part of Pulse Wipe AI community.

[00:18:24] - [Speaker 0]
Now, let's get back to the episode.

[00:18:32] - [Speaker 1]
And what about the process of collecting those biometrics themselves? It foolproof? Is the government being able to bring in groups that were previously outcasted like it claimed to? Or are there deficiencies of its own in this process that set out to exclude a whole new group?

[00:18:53] - [Speaker 2]
I think what we know is that the NID program in itself has been exclusionary by design. There's been instances where a lot of groups, especially marginalized and vulnerable populations, have been further marginalized because of this technology, because of this program in itself. We had interviewed with persons with disabilities where we found out that an individual, a person with disability who had physical disability shared that they had difficulty going to the registration center itself because it was placed in the First Floor, and they were unable to reach there, right? And then you see like there's a lot of probability of complications that arises with such a technology because, for example, person with disability, especially with visual disabilities, they are not able to capture their eye retina or iris scan. Or, for example, people who are engaged in agricultural work, like farmers, weren't able to give their fingerprint scan because it was detected as damaged or unreadable.

[00:20:04] - [Speaker 2]
So you can see that from the very start within its implementation phase, a lot of people have been excluded. And when you connect the service, the system with the service, these are the very people who are not able to access. So the NID program in itself is not accessible for a lot of individuals. I'd also like to add on to an information which is very striking is that what we found out was in the law, which is the NID card registration act, there is no requirement of citizenship card in order to make the NID. But in practice, it's been the complete opposite.

[00:20:43] - [Speaker 2]
So you can see like along with the requirement of citizenship card, there has been a lot of other pre required documents necessary for NID in practice. I'm talking about in practice, which is not in the law, right? So a lot of internal migrants or stateless citizens were not able to make the card because they did not have required documents. For example, married men and women who did not make their marriage certificate were not able to make the card. Some married men who worked abroad registered themselves as unmarried because they did not have time to secure their marriage certificate.

[00:21:21] - [Speaker 2]
So a lot of these examples were also seen during our research, which shows that the program has been excluding a lot of individuals, especially those who are from the margins or those who have not had other prior required documents because of various other reasons. Yeah.

[00:21:41] - [Speaker 1]
I'd like to work on this particular answer further by joining the idea of the rhetorics that are being promoted behind this program. You mentioned in your research that there's this odd sense of pseudo nationalist sentiment in the promotion of the NID where the card itself is being brought up as this new testament to who is a true Nepali. Can you elaborate on this rhetoric and what sort of anxiety or other troubles that it may create for the people who cannot access them.

[00:22:20] - [Speaker 2]
So during our research, what we found out that rather than individuals being afar in the fundamentals of privacy, data security, or where the information is being stored, communities were actually thinking that the possession of this NID is a form of true Nepali, or it's a supreme proof of being who you are as a Nepali individual, right? And what you were saying about it's quite troublesome, yes, because we live it's quite troublesome because Nepal is a very ethnically very diverse country where there are various groups, like diverse in terms not just of caste, class, language, in terms of gender, sexuality, orientation, and a lot of other identities. You see a lot of othering happens between various ethnic communities. And we know that especially Madhesh communities, those who live in the Lower Tarai Belt of Nepal, have been socially and systematically discriminated by the hill people or people who are lighter skinned, right? And many of these rhetorics, like who a true Nepali is, is already putting boxes into people.

[00:23:42] - [Speaker 2]
Like if you are from a certain color or if you are from a certain caste, then you are a Nepali, or else you are not. So this kind of rhetoric brings about the notion of us versus them. Like, who determines who a Nepali is, is determined by the card in itself. And as I was mentioning earlier, there are a lot of stateless citizens who do not have citizenship card. So they are already excluded or they are already put away from accessing the NID card.

[00:24:13] - [Speaker 2]
So this ethnic narrative of Nepaliness and all of these brings a lot of biases, brings a lot of prejudices. And I think that's something that we wanted to highlight in our paper as well. Yeah.

[00:24:30] - [Speaker 1]
Moving beyond just good governance, though, digitization in itself is a process that is not foolproof, and it does invite some risks. The government is collecting 18 different types of highly sensitive data, and external agencies are handling it. Recently, there's also news about Idemia's reluctance to pass the program's source code to the state, which is making handover look very shaky. And we're not sure if the government will successfully be able to get the data in the state's court. And there are so many facets to the impact of sharing massive sensitive data across the public, private and external bodies.

[00:25:14] - [Speaker 1]
So as we dive deeper into this, let's head a bit carefully as possible so we can be more precise in our evaluation. And to begin with, I think the best angle to start is the angle of data justice. So starting from the very grassroots level, what are the threats that people are now vulnerable to as Nepal ventures into the NID project regarding personal data security, privacy, and integrity?

[00:25:42] - [Speaker 2]
So digital privacy, information security, like as you were mentioning, are the fundamental concepts linked to an ID, right, and which has profound impacts on citizens' security and their digital rights. So within the digital rights also, we talk a lot about, like, right to information, right to informed consent, right to protection of sensitive data, which were not explained to the end users, to our communities. And during the registration process as well, Nepali citizens were not informed about the centralization of database being linked to other services. I was also mentioning earlier, right? And then there were like data collectors who themselves were confused about how the centralized database and how like the data breach would be when it comes to centralized database.

[00:26:40] - [Speaker 2]
So in terms of like government authorities, when we asked them where these data is being stored, right, their responses was that, you know, their responses tended towards national security. What they said was that, you know, there is this physical server in Singa Darbar, which means that our data is protected and which is not outside of the country. It's within the country, within the premises of most of the government offices. So that's why physical security is there. But when we actually talk about the data, we are not just talking about the physical security because we are talking about the holistic security.

[00:27:19] - [Speaker 2]
It comes with digital security as well. Recently, like, there's been cases of cyber threats and attacks within the government's servers. Very recently, in 2023 itself, there was a cyber attack in the government's integrated data center, which is actually managed by the Singa Darbar. And we saw that there were disruption of nearly 400 government websites within four hours. And we can sense that and we can see that these hacking incidents are not just standalone events.

[00:27:55] - [Speaker 2]
These have been happening for a very long time. And for a country which actually promotes digitization but does not have mechanisms for addressing cyber attacks and threat. And this is a really serious concern because it's linked to one's privacy. It's linked to one's information security, data security, and a lot more.

[00:28:17] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah, that particular response from the government was really shocking to read in your But also talking about data security on a more individual level, you give examples of how individuals were not able to understand of pins. In most of the cases, the government deployed collectors, they themselves were giving out the security pins to them. And these pins were made public to the local authorities. So this brings another facet to mind which is of extrajudicial surveillance. It's not just about external threats but also the state itself becoming a more overbearing body.

[00:28:57] - [Speaker 1]
What would you say about that?

[00:28:58] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. I think so because biometrics is also a tool for control, a tool for surveillance, right? And there's been actually cases from our studies, we've also kind of looked into, like, what are some of the instances of biometric data collection and its impact on citizens in different other countries. And we saw that in Kenya that data stored for one purpose was actually used for other purposes. And we also saw that these could actually be used to target and to surveil citizens.

[00:29:33] - [Speaker 2]
For example, the police could use this data and target criminalized behaviors, for example, maybe same sex sexuality, for example, or sex work, especially in countries like Nepal where sex work is not legalized. So I think a lot of if we'll really look back and look back and see these data being centralized and being used for different other purposes without our informed consent is a problem in itself and has a lot of threats to individuals.

[00:30:07] - [Speaker 1]
So it definitely has more grave human rights implications. Beyond that, I know your research has just started its second phase. And this is where you will research more on what I'm about to ask, but I thought this conversation would be remiss to not mention it. When we're talking about data security and the fact that data is something that's up in the cloud and it's open for attacks from all sorts of external threats. So what implication does this have for Nepal in a more geopolitical sense, being a country with very limited data security capacity?

[00:30:46] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[00:30:49] - [Speaker 2]
So this particular angle to like political economy and geopolitical scenario is actually being covered in the second phase of our research. So I think it would be good if we can talk about this more in the dissemination of our second phase, which is actually happening within the end of this year. Yeah. I think we've had an incredibly rich conversation today,

[00:31:16] - [Speaker 1]
but it's also quite sad to think about. Often when we talk about technology, we look at it with a lot of excitement. We are excited to see what problems it's going to solve for us, and we are so ready to believe that it will solve all our problems for us. But with this discussion so far, I'm not feeling so positively about technology anymore, especially in this fear of governance. So looking back at everything we've discussed and reevaluating not just the NID but also digitizing governance, I want to ask if we were able to take a step back and reconsider this what are the changes in perspective that we need in our approach?

[00:31:59] - [Speaker 1]
Can you maybe summarize the aspects that we've missed out in our approach to a policy, to a digitizing policy that involves something as sensitive as nationality and as novel as digitizing in governance?

[00:32:15] - [Speaker 2]
I think digitizing identities, digitizing governance, we need to look at a very holistic level, especially catering to Nepal's context because we are a very social, politically, culturally diverse country. And digitizing identities means it's connected to our body. It's connected to who we are as a person, right? Our bodies hold a lot of these data, data which are like quantifiers, which are like numerical data. But then it's linked to our existence.

[00:32:53] - [Speaker 2]
It's linked to our sense of self, who we are as a person, what our identities are, for example, what our identities are, and also our intersectional identities. For example, like, I identify as a woman, but also I identify as an indigenous woman, right? And then some other person might identify themselves as a person with disability, like a queer woman or, you know, a sex worker. Like, you know, it's linked with a lot of these minute identifiers. And it's really critical to individuals' privacy.

[00:33:25] - [Speaker 2]
It's critical to their bodily autonomy and overall human rights and digital rights. And so when we talk about, like, data breach or when we talk about, like, misuse of technology or selling of our data, of these minute identifiable data to the third party companies without our own consent, this is a direct violation of our right, right, of our right to agency to hold that data. It's an attack to our identity and our bodies. So when there's this lack of measurements to protect our data, it shows that government is not respecting our privacy. It's not respecting our identities.

[00:34:12] - [Speaker 2]
And I think it becomes very important that we bring those data back to our bodies because we are the ones to safeguard our own data. We should have that agency because we are the ones to get those services, right? And we should be able to determine where that data goes, how long that data should be retained, you know, and in what purposes can that data be used? Yeah. And as you were mentioning about how we are being pessimistic about technology, and it's coming from a very genuine side of it because we as digital rights organizations have been feeling that for a very long time as well because technology is not the only solution.

[00:34:57] - [Speaker 2]
Like, the idea that governments have about tech solutionism to all these problems in our society comes from a very narrow centered approach. So what we should understand is that technology is not the end goal, but it may be the means to solution or like means to addressing our problems. So before diving into technology and bestowing all our responsibility to that, we should first understand that we should first understand our social, political, cultural context and include those who are marginalized to have their own agency in determining what they want and, you know, in determining the technology that

[00:35:44] - [Speaker 1]
they want. I think that was an amazing explanation to what an alternative, more holistic approach to technology especially in governance can be and I think that's a great way to end our episode too but before we go is there anything else you want to share?

[00:36:02] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah so I'd like to share about our NID research which is going to be published end of this year. So the first phase of the research has been completed already and the second phase is in its finalization stage. So you can anticipate that within the end of this year. So anyone listening to the podcast, you're invited. Or like you can head on to our website bodyanddata.org to get to know more about what work we do, you know, what programs that we conduct.

[00:36:36] - [Speaker 2]
And yeah, we'd like to have you all know more about digital rights in the context of Nepal.

[00:36:43] - [Speaker 1]
And it's definitely a great resource. I personally had a great time learning about this issue. And we're so glad to have you here. Thanks for sharing your time and your knowledge with us. Thank you so much.

[00:36:55] - [Speaker 1]
Thank you. All the best for your future endeavors.

[00:37:04] - [Speaker 0]
Thanks for listening to Pods by PI. I hope you enjoyed Khushi's conversation with Neha on Nepal's national ID program within the context of digitization in governance. Today's episode was produced by Nirin Rai with support from Kushi Han, Sonia Jinny and me, Rideshakota. The episode was recorded at BI Studio and was edited by me, Ridesh. Our theme music is courtesy of Rohit Sake from Jindabad.

[00:37:30] - [Speaker 0]
If you liked today's episode, please subscribe to our podcast. Also, please do us a favor by sharing us on social media and leave a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. For PI's video related content, please search for Policy Entrepreneurs on YouTube. To cast the latest from us on Nepal's Policy and Politics, please follow us on Twitter tweettopi, that's tweet followed by the number two and PI. And on Facebook at policyentrepreneursinc.

[00:38:00] - [Speaker 0]
You can also visit pi.center to learn more about us. Thanks once again from me, Ritesh. We'll see you soon in our next episode.