It's something akin to a service provider in SAML parlance, if we are to believe reporting. How can it be air-gapped?

And if we are to believe the hacked company, it is a development environment with test data in it. That remains to be seen, but is a risky thing to lie about. If there is production data in the leak, we will surely know about it.

The point of a system like this is specifically that it’s accessible and not air gapped.

Being able to validate that a citizen is a citizen and their ID is valid inherently requires the system be accessible

If you need the data, you cannot have it air gapped. And if it is air gapped, it is still easy to make misstakes.