No national identification number

This is a nationwide issue

Affecting:

Accommodation, Automotive, Business Services, Education, Home and Garden, Transport, IT / Communications, Electricity, Gas, Water & Waste,

The first rule when managing a database is that every record needs a unique ID. In New Zealand there is no registry of the people who live here. There are no complete identification systems and no personal identification numbers. It is effectively very hard to tell people apart, and very easy for anyone to hide. Making health, property, car ownership, and mail address records a pain to maintain, and tax evasion and id fraud easy as pie.
Most countries in the developing world has such a registry, why not NZ?

What we're doing about it

0 Popular Solutions to this, 4 other possible solutions

Around here we don't just talk about issues, we come up with solutions and do something about it!

Solutions

Remove privacy act restriction on using IRD numbers for identification purposes

2 people support this, addressing No national identification number

Its a number that is unique, everyone has one (unlike a drivers license) and the databases to use for identity management already exist. see details

implementation

1 person supports this, addressing No national identification number

The hardest thing here is that there are already numerous 'invisible' people in New Zealand, if you implement such a system - it will no doubt go in at first as a voluntary system (as is the case with the DNA database) and of cause if it's volunta... see details

Introduce ID number at birth or on arrival from overseas

0 people support this, addressing No national identification number

NZ has a range of person registry's. IRD, work & income, health index, student number etc. all work towards the same purpose but they are not merged and not complete. A national identification number is used by the governments of many countri... see details

this issue raises issues of privacy

0 people support this, addressing No national identification number

What this would do is to assist in the growth of defining a list of every one in New Zealand as a number and not as a person, while in theory the idea of everyone having a unique code to distinguish themselves from everyone else in records, it tak... see details