Making it easier to apply for ID cards

No one likes wading through bureaucracy. It's tedious, time-consuming, and the waiting process can feel like years being taken off your life, one painstaking second at a time. Even when it's necessary, the prospect of queuing for hours on end could deter even the most civic-minded resident - as the Emirates' new identity card programme has demonstrated. Many countries have encountered problems when trying to introduce universal identity cards. Australia has attempted this several times, and at each instance the measure failed because of concerns about privacy. In Europe, countries are increasingly switching to electronic IDs, but the process is still lengthy and bureaucratic. In the UAE, however, the biggest impediment has been bureaucracy, or at least the perception that applying for the card will be a tedious process. Low enrolment and missed deadlines have been the result.
The rationale behind the programme is partly a matter of national security. In the UAE's polyglot society, keeping track of legal and illegal immigrants is a difficult task. But there are also reasons for the system in terms of eventually cutting bureaucracy in fields like health care and education. Authorities announced last year that the identity card, labour card and residency permit would be combined into one - obviously streamlining the system when this is accomplished. To prepare for that shift, the Emirates Identity Authority (Eida) announced yesterday that its capacity to process applicants will also increase: soon, centres around the Emirates should be able to process 22,000 applicants a day - up from 7,000 at present. This includes mobile registration centres, which will be able to reach the elderly, the disabled and other individuals who may not be able to easily reach registration centres. Eida also announced that the new cards can be read with a simple tap on a console.
Boosting capacity is a necessary prerequisite to such an endeavour, as the UAE's population is predicted to continue growing at a steady rate this year. As more and more services require residents to present their identity cards, the implementation of this process will have to be swift and effective in order to avoid leaving many individuals without access to basic services.