Over the next couple of years, your best identity will be a 16-digit number. And the number (in a 12+4 format) will not be embossed on a card — you’ll have to memorise it or salt away in a secret place. The number is given after verification of identity through biometric data consisting of 10 fingerprints and an Iris scan.
“It’ll be a neutral number to identify a person clearly, unambiguously,” said Nandan Nilekani, chairman of Unique Identification of Authority of India (UIDAI) at the BangaloreIT.biz event here on Friday.
He said initially, UID would be voluntary and issued only to those who apply. However, partner agencies such as public service institutions, private banks and companies could make it mandatory for their customers. Nilekani said UIDAI would provide only the foundational infrastructure on top of which partners will host their own applications.
“We are not in the application business. It would be offered as an open API (application programming interface) on top of which you can develop education, health, financial services or any other application,” said Nilekani.
The biggest challenge for UIDAI would be collection of biometric data and its “de-duplication” — or back-up — because the sheer scale of the project, which would cover a population of close to 1.2 billion, he said.
“Biometric data is a huge challenge. It (the scale of the project) is 10 times any similar project elsewhere in the world. We have to design for that scale,” said Nilekani.
The authority has set a target of issuing five million numbers in four years from the time the UID project is commissioned in late 2010 or early 2011.
He said the project would also face major logistical challenges as it would require thousands of servers. “The whole thing will be on cloud (referring to cloud computing, an emerging technology that uses the internet and central remote servers). We will also have to make it work on low bandwidth network because it would be ubiquitous on cellphones and since its authentification is online.”
Nilekani said his agency was also worried about security and privacy aspects of the project and would look at ways to make it hack- and fraud-proof. These challenges, notwithstanding, Nilekani has laid out the plan to meet his deadline. He has set up two committees —- a biometric committee headed by directorate general of national informatics centre (NIC) B K Gairola and data standards and verification committee led by N Mittal, former central vigilance committee (CVC) chief. These two committees would be submitting their reports in a couple of months. In six months, Nilekani said, the UIDAI would be coming out with a manual on how users can make their systems UID compatible.
“In other words, if you (users) become a partner, you will have to put the UID number in your database, you’ll have to embed the software into your application, you will have to build the forward and backward linkages All this will come in the manual called How To Become UID Ready.”
The UIDAI is also in the process of appointing a consultant that would help identify a data centre service provider, which would run the data centre for it.
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