Registration of all citizens of Sri Lanka who are of the age of 16 yrs and above and issuance of National Identity Cards to them under the provisions of Registration of Persons Act No.32 of 1968 as amended by Act Nos 28 and 37 of 1971 and Act No.11 of 1981.
   
The Department issues;
   
  New National Identity Cards (NICs) to first time applicants.
  Duplicates of identity cards to those who have lost their original IDs.
  Duplicates of identity cards to those who have got their original IDs damaged, defaced or have become illegible.
     
The application forms to apply for IDs are available with the Grama Niladharis(GN). These application forms are of 3 types.
   
    Applications for new IDs - to apply for an ID card for the first time.
    Applications for corrected IDs (CI) - to apply for a corrected ID in case the original is damaged, defaced, illegible or material information is changed
    Applications for duplicates for lost IDs (LI) - to apply for a duplicate ID when the original ID is lost

 		    
A person who wants to apply for a new, correction or a duplicate ID will have to obtain an application form from the GN of the area, and complete it with the required stamps and photographs and hand it back to the GN who will certify them and forward to the Department through the Divisional Secretary. In the case of school students the applications are to be forwarded through the respective school principals and in the case of estate employees applications are to be forwarded through respective estate superintendants.

Once the application is received in the Department if it is in order, the applicant will be registered, the ID prepared and will be sent to the DS to be delivered to the applicant through the GN.

 		  
The Department also conducts a one day service for issue of ID cards whereby an applicant can personally handover the perfected application certified by GN and the DS, to the one day counter in the Department and obtain the ID card on the same day. For this the Department charges a service fee of Rs.500/- per ID card.

 		  
The Department also conducts district mobile offices at Divisional Secretariat level as a service for those who live in remote areas of the country to enable them to handover their perfected applications direct to the officers of the Department and also to attend to their problems with regard to obtaining ID cards.

 		  
Institutional mobile services are also conducted by the Department when requests are received from different agencies to do so to facilitate the employees of such institutions to submit their applications for new, corrected or duplicate IDs.

 		  
The Department also issues clearance certificates to authenticate the information provided in the NICs, when requested by security forces, diplomatic missions, Immigration and Emigration Department and various other public sector agencies.

 		  
The Department implements accelerated NIC issuing programmes to cater to the needs of school students who sit GCE (O/L) and A/L Examinations, since it has been made compulsory for them to present the NIC when sitting the examinations.