The Emirates ID Card. Meh.

Image via WikipediaHaving applied for, and received, my Emirates ID card ages ago, I no longer take much notice of announcements, pronouncements and other strange noises coming from EIDA, the Emirates ID Authority. This is lucky as I would have gone mad.

The Cards Middle East conference has been taking place this week and EIDA's officials have been taking the opportunity to further inform the public regarding the ID cards, the introduction of which caused so much fun and hilarity. If you're interested in the backstory, you'll find much of it documented gleeully here.

Monday saw EIDA announcing that soon people will be able to use the PIN number issued with their cards. I cannot for the life of me remember being issued with a PIN number alongside my card, but who am I to argue? The PIN number I don't have will soon allow the public to access online services from the government, at first in Abu Dhabi. This is a good thing and I, for one, have no intention of letting any hiccups in the past colour my view of the most excellent services being planned for the future.

Today's announcement is that PROs can now pick up ID cards on behalf of company employees. For those unused to the many strangenesses of life in the UAE, a company's public relations officer, or mandoub, is the guy that takes care of visas, health tests and the many other government requirements businesses here have to satisfy. The EIDA move is all part of the 'redesign' of the card issuing process. Given the cards were first introduced/announced back in 2008, you'd have thought we'd had plenty of time get the process bedded down, but apparently not. Applicants have complaning about delays in issuing cards that stretch into weeks according to Gulf News, which does cite EIDA as saying 70% are delivered within five days.

The big news, however, is that the National ID card is 'to be mandatory' according to the GN piece, which manages somehow to keep a straight face in its reporting of a card we were first told would be mandatory back in 2008 and which has managed to be largely useful in the intervening period as a way of opening certain types of locked door, as a handy wallet-stiffener or a useful tool in prising apart the fingers and thumbs of accidentally super-glued infants.

Any contributions regarding other potential uses for Emirates Identity Cards are welcome.

The Emirates National Identity Card. A fiasco.

Image by dawn m. armfield via FlickrI've been moaning about the Emirates National Identity Card fiasco since early in  November 2008 - and I have by no means been alone - many august online voices (including SeaBee and Monsignor Goat) have been reeling around in awe at the ever changing cycles of misinformation that have clouded every aspect of the rollout of the UAE's national ID card scheme.

I suspect many of us viewed yesterday's pronouncements similarly - in fact, I voiced my glee on the Dubai Today show yesterday when I prophesied a round of the clarifications that SeaBee loves so well. Quite what has to be clarified isn't yet clear, because the lack of clarity in the things to be clarified is obscuring quite what could be clearer.

UAE newspaper 7Days, which has slowly but surely been regaining its tabloid swagger following the concerted campaign to eradicate it a while ago, today does what no other newspaper has dared to do. It listened to reader complaints and decided to actually investigate how people are meant to be making an application for a national ID card before the supposed December 31st deadline. Yes, you can pick yourself up from the floor now. It did journalism.

What was the result? The paper's Nichola Jones called all of the 30 typing centres listed on the EIDA website in Dubai to find out if she could start the application process. Only nine of these were working numbers - and of these, only three answered and only one actually confirmed they were accepting applications. None of the typing centres in Abu Dhabi answered the phone. This is perhaps understandable - one of the Dubai typing centres had explained to the paper they weren't taking applications as they were working through a backlog of over 1,000 forms.

Ten calls to the EIDA 'emergency hotline' weren't answered, confirming what the paper had heard from readers - it's chaos out there. Here's Nichola's story, Identity Crisis On The Cards?

Vague threats are being bandied about regarding fines - enough to prompt colleagues yesterday to start talking about applying for the card (I've had one since September 2009, although have not once managed to use it for anything useful like, for instance, identifying myself) and I told them to do what I did - download the amusingly titled application application. (You may recall, the application application was a PC application that let you fill out an application so that you can apply for an appointment to make an application. The application application didn't let you make an appointment for an application: you still had to apply for an application appointment even if you had an application filled using the application application.).

Except you can't. There is no longer an application application. It has expired.So you can only go to one of these mythical typing centres. It's worth noting that 7Days doesn't actually tell us which typing centre was open, contactable and claiming to be able to process applications. That'll be because the 7Days team are all down there today.

So what happens on the 31st December? Are people without an ID card application registered going to blow up? We can only wait for some clarification.

With all my twenty four years' in Middle East media and communications, I can tell you that in my professional opinion the introduction of the national ID card system in the UAE has been a case study in botched and muddled communications that has confused, and quite possibly squandered, millions. Some of the amazing backstory is in these posts from the past.


I am only amazed that over two years later, it is still going on.

(And now, with thanks to Mita, The Inevitable Clarification)

Dubai Vehicle Registration And The National ID Card. A Farce

Image via Wikipedia

Popped off to get the car registered, a tad late admittedly. Was just girding the old loins to do it when I was amazed to get a text from the RTA telling me I was in danger of blowing it and to get my butt online to register or go to a Shamil Centre. It's wrong of me to be so delighted when stuff like this happens, I know.

The Emarat Shamil station was amazingly fast, efficient and even friendly (up to a point) and the whole thing took just over 20 minutes.  How things have been transformed since the days of yore, when vehicle registration was at least a half day marathon often involving having to travel to other emirates to pay fines, multiple procedures, inexplicable counters with grunting staff and constant, shuffling queues!

It was almost all done, when the grumpy bloke behind the counter (the only grumpy bloke around, I have to say) says "Bassbort."

A passport is not, of course, a requirement that is outlined in the RTA's online vehicle registration guidelines. But I'm old enough to know that you need your passport for anything official, semi-official, quasi-official or where a bureaucrat is involved (for instance, the bank) or where you can see no conceivable need for a passport.

I thought I'd try my luck. "I have my ID card. Here."

Incredibly, the response was "Not this. Not need this. Want bassbort."

"But this is the National ID card. It has all of my information. My biometrics. It confirms me."

"Need bassbort."

"Why?"

"It has information. Visa expiry and sponsor name."

And so I had to get my bassbort out for him and pocket my, now confirmed as totally useless, national ID card, the document that, as you'll recall, was the most critical thing that you absolutely, certainly needed for vehicle registration as of last week.

I wonder if you can play tiddleywinks with them?

PS: There's a new rule whereby you have to have a little triangular warning thingy in your car. The Emarat stations sell 'em for Dhs30.