ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka government has assured that there will not be any data breach in a move to allay fears over mis-use personal and biometric data could be accessed by external parties in the India-funded digital national identity card (NIC) project.
The project has faced long delay amid concerns over data privacy of Sri Lankan citizens and protection of personal data.
“There is no way for any data breach. We will ensure that,” Eranga Weeraratne, Deputy Digital Economy Minister told reporters at a media briefing on Monday (14) when he was asked about security concerns.
“There are various accusation made by various fractions for political reasons with political agendas,” he said.
“Many things spoken out in the media are not true. For example iris scanners have not been bought yet. Also the system would not capture any medical information. It is just the digital ID with the standard ID information and the biometrics data.”
“As we have educated before, capturing of these data as well as the system support and maintenance would be 100 percent done by the local people – Sri Lankan companies and people. Therefore, nothing to be fear of.”
India has already given an advance aid of 450 million Indian rupees to former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s government to fund the digital ID project, which aims to collect biographic and biometric information, including facial, iris, and fingerprint data.
The decision to award the tender to print digital ID cards for an Indian firm has raised concerns over data privacy of Sri Lankan citizens and protection of personal data.
Some security analysts have raised concern over data privacy with Indian companies being selected to print the IDs.
The Indian project is expected to store the personal data of every individual in a centralized system to issue identification cards as per the standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), government officials have said, to effective and efficient delivery of government services, financial inclusion, and poverty reduction. (Colombo/July 15/2025)
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