Mr Joseph Kwame Adjei, a Fellow with the Aalborg University on Tuesday said Ghana needs to strengthen her civil registration system and to integrate it with the national identification system.

This is to ensure best practices in crafting trusted identity management system, he added.

Mr Adjei was speaking at a day’s stakeholder workshop organised in Accra to address the technological, regulatory and policy implications on secondary uses and commercialisation of personal identity information.

The workshop aimed at bringing key stakeholders together to identify the major issues involved in crafting trusted identities that could help in removing barriers that preclude key stakeholders from easily adopting digital identification technologies that are secured and trusted for commercial purposes.

Mr. Adjei expressed concern about the numerous national identity management systems and called for pragmatic steps to efficiently manage the system. He underscored the importance of focusing on identity rather than on credential issues that are based only on physical verification.

Mr. Adjei noted that investment and deployment of Information Technology infrastructure as well as efficient recruitment of effective human resource base to manage the information sector would help address the challenge.

Government in many countries have implemented some form of identity management systems as a critical enabler of government to citizens’ interaction, and in facilitation of sensitive transactions and activities like elections, cross-border control, online banking and accessing electronic health records.

The outcome of the workshop therefore is to assist in policy formulation and research work in trusted identity management and commercial uses of personal information.