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Good practice

Suriname e-ID — National Digital Identity Card

Suriname · Paramaribo · See the Suriname profile

Suriname's e-ID replaced paper ID cards with a biometric digital ID, backed by a legal deadline that forced adoption. By April 2022, over 320,000 citizens — more than half the population — held a valid e-ID, though interior communities still lag.

320,346
Citizens holding a valid e-ID (by 28 April 2022)
~119,000
Citizens not yet applied or awaiting collection/processing (as of April 2022)
13
Bureaus voor Burgerzaken equipped with e-ID booths
3 years
Transition window before paper IDs lost validity (15 March 2019 – 15 March 2022)
Suriname e-ID — National Digital Identity Card

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Centraal Bureau voor Burgerzaken (CBB), Ministry of Home Affairs, Suriname
Period
2019–present
Keywords
digital identity, e-government, civil registration, digital public infrastructure

Context

Suriname's Centraal Bureau voor Burgerzaken (CBB), under the Ministry of Home Affairs, launched the e-ID on 15 March 2019, replacing the country's PVC identity card with a machine-readable digital ID that stores a citizen's e-signature, facial image and fingerprints. To drive adoption, the government set a hard legal deadline: old paper-style ID cards lost their legal validity on 15 March 2022, a three-year transition window. The rollout combined this deadline with physical service expansion, including 13 Bureaus voor Burgerzaken equipped with dedicated e-ID booths in towns such as Moengo, Apoera and Nieuw-Nickerie.

Results

By 28 April 2022, independent news outlet United News Suriname reported that 320,346 citizens held a valid e-ID, with roughly 119,000 more either not yet applied or awaiting collection or processing.

Conclusions

Remote interior communities, including Anapaike and Apetina, have specifically requested mobile registration services — a gap the government's own reporting acknowledges remains open.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Data sources

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

Attachments

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