To establish and maintain the National Digital ID system for Samoan citizens and residents, Improve the efficiency of government service delivery – National ID system will assist.

Link government information databases in a secured manner to assist in the formulation of national planning and developments for the benefits of all.

The objectives of this Act are to provide a modern national digital identification system for citizens and permanent residents of Samoa and others present in the country for a significant period of time, linked with a modern civil registration system, providing a digital, unique, legally recognised identity for such individuals and a function for authenticating them in connection with the provision of services to them and transactions with them, while protecting personal data associated with such system.

Mass registration
• Implementation of a National Digital Identity is a major opportunity, but it also poses risks that need to be managed. Additional resources will be needed, and international experience shows that implementation and exploitation of statistical registers needs to be handled with care to maintain trust and cooperation of citizens and data custodians. Care needs to be taken to maintain a separation between statistical and regulatory use of data.

The proposed National Digital Identity System, and a fully digitised system for Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS), will provide foundations for the development of a population register which could become a primary authoritative source of reliable information on population in Samoa. A population register could then potentially enable Samoa to join the growing ranks of countries that carry out a “combined census” whereby some information is taken from the population registers, while other information is collected through the usual census field operations.

A realistic objective would be for Samoa to be in a position to do this in within 10 years– for the 2031 Census. For this to become a reality, work needs to start now with development of infrastructure and capabilities and pilot projects that demonstrate the value to the government and the community.