Nezavisne novine: Before beginning of issuing biometric passports, which is planned for the end of the next year, control of the civil servants of the institutions which issue the documents, will be maximally sharpened. This has been said for “Nezavisne novine” by Siniša Macan, the director of Directorate for Implementation of the CIPS project. This Directorate is counting the last days, and with additional activities, its affairs will be overtaken by the newly formed Agency for identification documents, evidence and data exchange.
Macan says that in the CIPS there were not any falsifications of identification documents, but there were falsifications of the entering data, which is being investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH. He says that there were not any CIPS officials involved in it.
Nezavisne novine: The Directorate of CIPS is changing the name these days. What are the essential changes in work of this institution?
Macan: The Law on the Agency for identification documents, evidence and data exchange has been recently announced in the “Official Gazette of BiH”. By this Law, the Directorate for implementation of the CIPS project, which was established as a temporary institution has been practically closed. Implementation of that project has finished. Now the Agency which has a precise authorization on personalization of identification documents and leading the central registers and other data for the authorities of security is being formed.
Nezavisne novine: Does this mean that for the citizens nothing has practically changed?
Macan: There has been thought earlier that the Directorate of CIPS issues personal documents in BiH. Directorate does not issue them, nor was it issuing. Each citizen of BiH on their identification card has a column in which it says by whom it was issued, and that is one of the Ministries of Internal Affairs of the Federation of BiH, Center for public security in the Republic of Srpska, or public registry of District Brčko. On locations of CIPS work the officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Whatever the citizens need in relation to that, these institutions will be working on it.
Nezavisne novine: What will the Agency do?
Macan: The Agency will set down the standards on what are the requirements that need to be satisfied in order to issue the personal documents on those locations. Next step is issuing the biometric passports where the special requirements would need to be satisfied, and there is also a special process of control of persons who will be issuing those documents. The Agency will set down the conditions, and the officials from the stated institutions will be still issuing the documents. In agreement with recommendations of the European Commission, the Agency will store non – personalized documents in one place in BiH, and then do the personalization. It means that the information entered by authorities on locations, the Agency will record in one place and put them on the forms of identification documents. The goal is to establish one institution on the state level, as recommended by the European regulations. Before establishing the biometric passports, we created such institution according to European standards. Authorization of the Agency is to maintain the computer network for the transfer of data. Institutions which issue the documents, different police authorities, and the complete network of the High judicial and prosecuting world, are connecting to that network. All locations of the Central Election Commission and their municipal commissions are in that network. The Agency has by this Law confirmed itself as a technical service for the authorities which issue the documents to those who have right to check the data.
Nezavisne novine: What are the results of investigation of falsification of personal data or documents because of which several CIPS locations were closed?
Macan: There was not any falsification of personal documents. In technical sense, falsification of personal document means that someone takes and makes a card or form in which personal data can be entered. The worst problem we had was control of institutional officials who issue the documents. We will maximally sharpen this control. Investigation will show that the entering data which the citizens deliver in order to get personal cards has been false.
Nezavisne novine: Entering documents are birth documents, confirmations of citizenships…..
Macan: Right. It is possible by help of authorities to enter this data and personalize it later. I do not have the details of investigation, nor in what measure and way this has been done. It is important to us that there are mechanisms which can verify who and what has done in this system, and on basis of which data. The system can be accessed by authorized passwords and each servant is responsible for that password. Servants have even given their passwords to someone else to work while they are gone, but they have to take responsibility for this. Neither CIPS servant has been involved in this, nor could they have done this. We had a great cooperation with the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, and there was not any entrance into our rooms, but only so-called CIPS locations, where the servants of the Ministry of Internal Affairs work.
Nezavisne novine: How safe is the personal data of citizens?
Macan: We here talk about authorized servants which have right to access the data. Through the new Law we made the mechanisms to efficiently control the servants who work on issuing the documents. Standards recommend the way of selecting the servants and the way of their work. It depends on how much have the authorities taken care of this, that much the data has been safe. We never had situations that someone from the outside enters the system, but the authorized servants have been doing certain misuses, which will be shown by investigation. Beside the technical control, there are also anticorruption programs which must be applied by the state.
Nezavisne novine: Will this agency be the service for transition to biometric passports, as it was the transition to CIPS documents?
Macan: Today we are a technical support for issuing travel documents. All the travel documents are being personalized in our organizational units and they are being made in the same way as personal cards. The only difference is that data is already being entered in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and it has been planned to replace this process on CIPS locations. By now there have been around 20 points in BiH, and now this will be in the each Municipality where the authorities issue personal cards. Now we are in the phase of planning the implementation which has been accepted by the Council of the Ministers a year ago. Besides the process of visa liberalization, we have been also implementing these plans. For biometric passports little better conditions are needed and we have already prepared ourselves for it. We expect that by the end of next year will begin issuing biometric passports.
Established the registry of stolen vehicles
Nezavisne novine: Has the database of the registered vehicles in BiH finished, and what are the failings verified before forming this basis?
Macan: This project has been successfully completed and the central registry of the vehicles in BiH has been established. The Ministries of Internal Affairs are entering the data into the central system as well. There have been cases where the doubled registration plates have been received and that cannot happen again. The Ministries of Internal Affairs are changing such plates to the owners who had difficulties because of the absence of data exchange to receive the same plates. The central registry of stolen vehicles has also been established before the war to today. Persons have even several times registered a stolen vehicle, and now this has been uncovered. Certain number of data has been sent to the Interpol and there are several hundreds. We are evidencing this, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs is verifying the number of such vehicles which have been found and they are leading the further process.