Tuesday 1st September, 2026
The Government is moving ahead with plans to give every public servant a Digital ID by the end of 2026, bringing the country another step closer to having a trusted digital identity system for accessing government services.
The Department of Personnel Management (DPM) has directed government agencies to begin preparing employee information for the initiative, with October 31 set as the deadline for agencies to submit the required records.
The initiative is being carried out in collaboration with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), which is leading the Government’s wider digital transformation programme.
Under Circular Instruction 19/2026, issued by DPM Secretary Taies Sansan on August 31, agencies must collect a clear and recent photograph of every public servant and make sure it is correctly matched with the employee’s payroll number and other staff information.
The information will be checked against Government payroll records before the Digital IDs are issued.
The immediate reason for the exercise is to support the Government’s “One Person, One Position, One Pay” policy and strengthen the accuracy of public service records.
DPM said the Digital ID will help the Government improve payroll integrity, strengthen accountability and identify fraudulent or duplicate records, including ghost employees.
But from DICT’s perspective, the initiative forms part of a much bigger change in how people will identify themselves and access government services.
DICT has been developing the country’s digital public infrastructure, including SevisPass, which is intended to provide people with a trusted digital identity for accessing digital government services.
The DPM circular encourages public servants to register through DICT’s digital ecosystem to obtain a SevisPass.
This brings the public service into the wider digital identity work already being undertaken by the Government.
Instead of relying entirely on separate paper records and different identification processes across government agencies, the longer-term direction is towards trusted digital systems that can verify a person’s identity when they use government services.
For public servants, the first stage is the verification of their existing employment records.
Government agencies have been told to work through their Human Resources and ICT teams to make sure employee information is complete and accurate before it is submitted.
Each employee will have a folder identified by their payroll number containing their photograph and staff information. DPM will then use the submitted information as part of its verification process against the Government payroll system.
The October 31 deadline is intended to give DPM time to complete these checks before the Government’s December 31 target for issuing Digital IDs to all public servants.
The exercise also shows the growing need for government agencies to work together as digital systems are introduced across the public sector.
DPM is responsible for managing public service personnel records, while DICT is supporting the digital systems and wider digital transformation work behind the initiative.
The success of the Digital ID programme will therefore depend not only on collecting information, but also on making sure the information is accurate, secure and usable across the systems that government is building.
For a country working to expand digital government services, having a reliable way to establish that a person is who they claim to be is an important part of that process.
The public service is one of the first large groups being brought into this system.
Once the employee information has been collected and checked, the Government will move towards its December target of providing public servants with Digital IDs.
The initiative is expected to form part of the Government’s broader push to create a digital economy in which citizens, businesses and government can increasingly interact through trusted digital services.
For DICT, the public service rollout provides a practical starting point for that wider transformation: giving government employees a verified digital identity that can eventually support how they work, identify themselves and access government services in a more connected digital system.
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