A little more than four years after then-President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law Republic Act 11055 or the Philippine Identification System Act on 6 August 2018, the full realization of the aim to establish a single national ID for all Filipinos and resident aliens remains illusory.

RA 11055 established the Philsys that will supposedly provide 92 million target Filipinos with a valid proof of identity — the Philippine Identification or PhilID card — to simplify public and private transactions, enrolment in schools, and the opening of bank accounts.

Tasked to be the primary agency to carry out the provisions of the law is the Philippine Statistics Authority which will maintain the national registry for the PhilID and issue the cards to all qualified registrants.

For some reason unacceptable to many, including lawmakers, the delivery of PhilID cards took forever for more than 74 percent of registrants or more than 68 million out of its 92 million target.

As of early July this year, the PSA said 14.3 million physical cards have been delivered. It could have slightly increased as of date. It is absolutely unacceptable considering that their timeline set a target of 36.4 million cards delivered by June 2022.

Citizens' ire over the delay of PhilID cards makes sense. It was "fake news" for them to be told that their cards will be delivered 3-6 months after completing Step 2 (on-site collection of biometric information including photographs, fingerprint, and iris scan) of the PhilID registration.

PhilID online comments are teeming with mounting complaints like — still no cards delivered after more than a year; not all household members, who completed Step 2 at the same time, received theirs; "erasable" print quality, the low resolution of ID photo, and people saying it is 'Phil-Tiis', not Philsys.

Ridiculous for a multi-billion national ID system project, that has been allocated P27.8 billion.

A Commission on Audit report for 2020 and 2021 cited its observations of Department of Finance non-financial issues that read, "the quantity of produced and delivered Philippine Identification cards did not meet the requirement provided in the terms of reference; thus, causing delay to the Philippine Identification System project of the government, intended to streamline the transactions in both the public and private sectors."