Proposed NIDS board role draws fire
Published:Friday | February 12, 2021 | 12:32 AM
Voluntary enrolment in the National Identification System (NIDS) may not achieve significant buy-in without strong moral suasion and targeted social marketing, a senior technocrat has said.
Making a submission before a meeting of the joint select committee examining the new NIDS bill on Thursday, Wayne Henry, director general of the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), said that voluntary registration might pose “constraints for efficiency and effectiveness in both design and implementation”.
But it was Section 6 of the NIDS bill that speaks to the role of the board of management and how it will oversee the general administration of the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) that stirred intense debate during the committee’s deliberations.
The bill states that the board of management shall develop policies and procedures for the creation, management, maintenance. and operation of the NIDS.
Further, the board will have responsibility for the enrolment of eligible individuals, the generation and assignment of a national identification number, as well as to evaluate and monitor how the chief executive officer (CEO) implements NIRA’s operational, strategic, and corporate plans.
Committee member Peter Bunting said the current responsibilities of the board as set out in the bill were overreaching and should have been assigned to the CEO.
“What you are going to find here is that you are basically giving permission to board members to interfere in the operations and undermine the CEO, and we have seen the risks of that,” he said.
Aubyn Hill, another committee member, said that the mandate of the board was a departure from good governance policy.
“Where the board has executive power and I am the CEO, and something happens in that organisation, I would like to see you hold me accountable because I am going to tell you straight to your face, ‘That was your decision, not mine!’” Hill contended.
Attorney General Marlene Malahoo Forte told the committee that the proposed NIRA board of management was meant to be an operational body doing the actual work of the authority.
“It is true that in another dispensation you have a model where you have a board of governors and you have the operation level below which does certain kinds of work, but this is specifically a board of management,” she explained.
Dwight Sibblies, member of parliament for Clarendon Northern, said it would be inappropriate for the board to craft policy and turn around and review its own work.
The structure and purview of the board would have to be reviewed, said Donna Scott Mottley.
“I understand the policy direction, but I think it is faulty,” she said.
The committee concluded that it would have to tighten the functions of the board as against the role of the CEO.