PNG Digital ID Contest: WPU Students Sweep Top Honours

Two teams of computing students from Western Pacific University have walked away with top honours in a national competition testing how well young innovators can put Papua New Guinea's new digital identity system to work.

The students beat out rivals from across the country in the Higher Education Institution category of the National Digital ID Hackathon, taking home two of the three prizes on offer during the grand final staged as part of the Digital Transformation Summit in Port Moresby from July 17 to 22.

 PNG Digital ID Contest: WPU Students Sweep Top Honours/Photo supplied

Team Cyber ProNetz claimed the overall crown in their category for a platform called WokKonek, built to link young Papua New Guineans with jobs ranging from casual labour to formal employment. The four-member team — Rialisa Bogas, Vincent Paul, Gillion Kombo and Jonathan Kamalan — designed the system around SevisPass, the national digital ID, to confirm the identities of both employers and jobseekers before any work arrangement goes ahead.

The platform also draws on SevisPay for secure payments and includes a reputation-rating feature, an approach judges said could turn PNG's largely informal labour market into something safer and more accountable for workers who often have no formal contracts to fall back on.

A second WPU team, Stax, picked up the Technical Excellence Award for their entry, SevisBirth — an offline birth registration tool built for use in health facilities. Team leader Avaneesh Oti worked alongside Hazel Liz Ikum and Shaquille Kajoka to design a system letting parents register a newborn's birth using biometric checks through SevisPass, without needing paper documents or a trip to a provincial registry office. Once registered, families receive a digital birth certificate straight to their SevisWallet account.

Judges singled out SevisBirth as the strongest technical build among all entries in the university category, praising its potential use in rural health centres where birth registration has long been a challenge.

Bogas said her team had to overhaul their pitch midway through the competition after realising it needed sharper focus.

"It was hectic, but we pulled through on the strength of our IT skills and our experience in campus debates," she said.

The National Digital ID Hackathon was run by the Department of Information and Communications Technology together with MicroSave Consulting, and unfolded over three stages beginning in June — starting with skills training, moving into mentored prototype-building on the SevisPass staging platform, and finishing with the grand final in the capital. Twelve teams reached the final round, split evenly between the university category and a separate track for financial services entrants, with competitors travelling in from as far as Ialibu, Madang, Wewak and Lae.

WPU's contingent was guided throughout by Eremas Tade, a lecturer in the university's Cybersecurity and Digital Resilience Department, who accompanied the students to Port Moresby, with Havea Daure, head of the Computing and Emerging Technologies Department, and lecturer Solomon Hombiku assisting as co-supervisors during preparation.

University president Professor Janet Bulumaris Rangou, who was also in Port Moresby for the summit and took part in a session on innovation and centres of excellence, said the wins reflected the direction WPU wants its graduates to take.

"Their success reflects WPU's vision of developing future-ready graduates who are innovative, technologically skilled and equipped to thrive in an era of AI, robotics, IoT and smart systems," she said. "We are proud of their achievement and confident that they will continue to make valuable contributions to their communities, industries and the nation's development."