Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua has assumed full responsibility over the technical glitch that transpired when the National ID registration went online last Friday.
The head of the National Economic and Development Authority and chairman of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) Board said the glitch was “inexcusable.”
Chua said that the system was prepared to accommodate as much as 16,000 to 35,000 simultaneous users per minute. But on the actual first minute when the system went live, a total of 46,000 users logged on.
“I would like to extend my sincerest apologies to the Filipino people for what happened and there is no excuse for what happened. I take full responsibility,” Chua said. “Our capacity was not enough. Now what we [have to] do right now is to review our system so we can increase the load.”
Chua said despite the glitch, a total of 2,000 users were able to successfully complete their registration. The system remains open, Chua said, but it cannot handle “tens of thousands” of users at a given time.
“It’s like when you open a new theme park or restaurant, although you are ready for the peak during holidays or weekends sometimes on the first day, everyone just wants to participate and we thank them but we are also very sorry for what happened,” Chua said.
Prior to the opening of the online registration for Step 1 of the National ID, PSA was already able to register around 33.3 million Filipinos in the National ID.
Step 1 involved the collection of demographic data and setting of the appointment schedule for Step 2. Step 2 involved the provision of biometric information such as fingerprints and iris scans through registration centers.
The last step involves the provision of PhilSys Number and printing of cards. The PSA and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas are discussing the possibility of printing more than 160,000 cards per day starting this month.