evidoria

← Back to browse

Good practice Imported

RENAP SIBIO — Guatemala's Biometric ID Backbone, Re-Procured Amid Vendor Conflict-of-Interest Concerns

Guatemala · Guatemala City · See the Guatemala profile · See the Guatemala City profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 89% 33/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Guatemala's national registry re-let its biometric identity contract in 2026 to a firm with almost no prior large-scale experience and undisclosed ties to a previously cancelled, security-flagged biometric deal, per investigative reporting.

Q39.9 million ~US$5.1M
Contract value
18 million+
Registered citizens covered
30 million biometric records, 200,000 queries/day
System capacity

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
RENAP (Registro Nacional de las Personas)
Period
2009-ongoing (2026 system overhaul)
Keywords
digital identity, biometrics, civil registry, AFIS, facial recognition

Context

Guatemala's RENAP re-let its Q39.9 million SIBIO biometric-ID contract in March 2026, covering AFIS and facial-recognition checks underpinning identity documents for 18M+ registered citizens.

Results

Investigative reporting (La Hora) found the winning contractor had almost no prior large-scale government-contract experience and undisclosed ties to a company behind a previously cancelled, security-flagged biometric deal at Guatemala's social security institute.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
RENAP (Registro Nacional de las Personas), New Generation Networks S.A. (contracted vendor), Innovatrics (named software provider)

Conditions for success

  • transparent, competitively verified procurement
  • resolved vendor-chain conflict-of-interest concerns

Common failure modes

  • winning contractor had minimal prior large-scale experience
  • undisclosed ties to a previously cancelled, security-flagged biometric contract

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Similar practices you may find useful