By: Staff Writer
July 25, Colombo (LNW): Sri Lanka has taken a bold step towards the implementation of a national digital identity system by engaging India’s National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) to oversee the roll out of its electronic National Identity Card (eNIC) project.
The program under the Sri Lanka Unique Digital Identity (SL-UDI) project by the Ministry of Digital Economy follows the Modular Open-Source Identity Platform (MOSIP), an internationally recognised open-source platform developed in India.
The project will provide a secure, verifiable digital identity to every citizen to enhance public service access, governance, and anti-fraud.a high official of the Ministry of D9giotal economy disclosed. .
The Sri Lankan Government, jointly with NISG, issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) near the end of June 2025 inviting an Indian Master Systems Integrator to create and deploy the eNIC system.
NISG, which has played a key role in India’s Aadhaar initiative and other big e-governance initiatives, will handle the selection and technical integration task.
The selected Indian integrator will be responsible for: deploying biometric enrollment and authentication systems, integrating MOSIP with Sri Lanka’s existing digital infrastructure and conducting pilot programs and onboarding the initial population
However, Chief Advisor to the President on Digital Economy, Hans Wijesuriya emphasised that while India will assist in the system setup, all biometric and personal data will remain fully under Sri Lanka’s control. Data will be hosted on local servers, with no foreign access or external data transfers permitted.
MOSIP, industrialised by the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B), is being used in several countries such as Morocco, the Philippines, and Ethiopia. MOSIP provides a modular and secure identity management system with open Application Programming Interfaces, (APIs ) and strong privacy safeguards.
The partnership with NISG is reflective of a deepening of Indo-Lanka digital ties and is seen as a strategic balancing of geopolitical influence by Sri Lanka while promoting its digitalization. It also offers a low-cost, transparent, and scalable solution to create a foundational identity system aligned with global best practices.
The RFP deadline is August 5, 2025, and implementation of the project is expected to commence by the end of the year. The eNIC, when fully rolled out, will enable access to public services, e-banking, welfare schemes, and eventually be a key enabler of Sri Lanka’s digital economy strategy.
