A Proposed Unified Digital Id Framework for Access to Electronic Government Services

The concept of identification has always been of great significance in terms of connecting an individual to his/her community. Verifying the identity of a person (card or number) is vital for granting the right and secure access to numerous services embedded within an Electronic Government (e-Government). e-Government applications typically require the need for citizens to provide a form of digital identity (card or number) for access to numerous services, as against the multiplicity of existing ones that are used for different platforms in Nigeria today. Nigeria and other developing nations have not taken the optimum advantage of utilizing an all in one digital identity card for providing citizens with an array of e-Government services, as well as proper authentication methods for security, as recorded in highly innovative nations in the world today. This paper addresses two major challenges of identity management in Nigeria, which are poor authentication methods for access to services and inadequate management of multiple identification systems. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to propose a web-based digital identity system framework for accessing multiple e-Government services, which includes Electronic Voting, driver's licence, Electronic Passport, Electronic Health and Electronic Payment. Also included in the framework is the authentication services, which utilizes Near Field Communication (NFC) smart cards, biometric data, and One Time Password (OTP) as a consistent and reliable means of identifying and authenticating the user's access to the embedded e-Government services.