To combat the high instance of identity fraud and improve the overall student validation process at the time of the exam, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) in Nigeria has adopted a mobile ID system. Now more than 2.2 million students register online and receive machine-readable HID Global smart cards every year.
To combat the high instance of identity fraud and improve the overall student validation process at the time of the exam, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) in Nigeria has adopted a mobile ID system. Now more than 2.2 million students register online and receive machine-readable HID Global smart cards every year.
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) is West Africa’s foremost examining body. It was established by law in 1952 and today, is comprised of five member countries ─ Nigeria, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Liberia.
Every year WAEC registers more than 2.2 million students for annual exams conducted in more than 13,000 participating exam centers across Nigeria. With an admirable mission and high standards, WAEC soon realized maintaining the integrity of the organization was going to require more than basic security procedures to identify, authenticate and monitor students during the examinations process while at the same time, providing a professional and comfortable testing environment.
The historical method for exam registration and authorizing is manual, time consuming, and susceptible to fraud. Students register online and are provided a paper receipt that is later manually validated at the time of testing without a secure process to confirm the student is who he or she says. For this reason tracking and recording cases of identity fraud is difficult.
To facilitate improvements in the annual examinations, WAEC turned to Botosoft, based in Lagos, Nigeria who commissioned HID Global to assist with the development and deployment of a secure card issuance and mobile ID system which allowed WAEC to meet and exceed its security needs within budget.
HID Global leveraged Government ID expertise and offerings to deliver a customized solution to accept the raw data from WAEC’s online enrollment process; validate the information and prepare it for use in personalizing the cards in the Botosoft facility.
Additionally, HID Global assisted with the design and development of the mobile reader application software used in the mobile readers. Once issued, Botosoft’s Candidates Identity Verification, Attendance, Malpractice and Post-Examinations Management System (CIVAMPEMS) ensures effective administration of the “Exam Day” process.
Students now register online. The information is used to personalize and issue a machine-readable smart card to each student. This same information is stored in a central biometric database that can be accessed in real-time by the new mobile readers at the time of the exam.
Today, more than 15,000 mobile readers have been distributed to over 3,500 exam centers throughout Nigeria allowing supervisors to identify and authenticate students at the time of the exam by accessing student information from the HID smart card and validating it against the central database in real-time. Similarly, information about the testing process including, date, time and the name of the testing center is added to the student’s online records.
WAEC’s vision to be a world-class examinations body and gaining international recognition now inspires and challenges more than 2.2 million African students every year. To facilitate improvements in the annual examinations, WAEC teamed with BotoSoft and HID Global to develop an electronic Student ID card program that would address high volume issuance requirements and the need to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the annual exams.