HALABJA, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – The Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) KRDPass application has acquired 45,000 users within two days of beta testing, with around 1,000 new users signing up for the service hourly, according to the head of the KRG’s Department of Information Technology (DIT) Hiwa Afandi.

“In just two days since the KRDPass app was made available to citizens as a trial, more than 45,000 people have downloaded and are using it, and the number is growing by more than a thousand people per hour,” Afandi wrote on Facebook. “More than one million employees will benefit from the services of this program within a month, but this is just the beginning and less than one percent of our goal.”

The app, which was rolled out for beta testing on Tuesday on both iOS and Android operating systems, “works as an electronic wallet,” Afandi told The New Region on Tuesday, saying that “citizens can scan all their official documents, such as civil status ID, birth certificate, passport…and store them securely within the app.”

The app allows citizens to follow up on their paperwork and official applications, with an indicator changing from red to green in the app to inform user of the status of their requests. 

While in beta testing, the service remains available only for government employees, contiaining data regarding the user's biometric code, UPN, salary list, and monthly salary distribution schedules. According to Afandi, the service is set to expand to regular citizens in future.

“The KRDPass has been our vision for the past three to four years, it's a great example of the iceberg phenomenon, as a lot of the things we've built so far were done to support the idea of KRDPass and digital identity in general,” Shkar Taib Noori, head of the DevOps department at the DIT, told The New Region on Friday.

“There are a lot of features in development currently for KRDPass, our vision is to bring services to people via their phones, things like self-service, documents, car fines, bills, payments, etc,” Noori noted, adding that they are taking a “service-by-service approach” in regard to the application.

The New Region has learned that the software is set to be upgraded to include more services in the future, with future integration with MyAccount and personal credit cards allowing users to pay off fines and water and electricity bills.

When asked about future initiatives the DIT is working on, Noori told The New Region that there are other projects in the pipeline, one of which “will be announced very soon.” However, he affirmed that their primary focus at present remains on streamlining and expanding KRDPass.

Digitalizing the Kurdistan Region’s affairs has been one of the key goals of the KRG’s ninth cabinet under Prime Minister Masrour Barzani. In addition to KRD Pass, the government has also moved to modernize the method by which civil servants receive their salaries through the MyAccount initiative, enhancing financial stability and granting beneficiaries access to a diverse array of financial services, including savings accounts.

Over 800,000 beneficiaries have already signed up for the MyAccount project since it started in September 2023.

The lead DevOps developer further noted that the initiative aims to serve the entire Kurdistan Region’s population inclusively and is not limited to government employees, as certain rumors have suggested.