The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)

It has been created under the Planning Commission. Its role is to issue unique identity numbers to Indian
residents. On June 25th 2009, the Cabinet appointed Mr. Nandan Nilekani as the first Chairperson in the
rank and Mr. Ram Sewak Sharma has been appointed the Director General.

A Unique Identification is merely a string assigned to an entity that identifies the entity uniquely. The
purpose is to assign a Unique ID to every person residing in India. Biometric identification system and
checks and ensure that each individual is assigned one and only one UID and the process of generating a
new UID would ensure that duplicates are not issued as valid UID numbers. Once a billion plus people have
been assigned a UID, and applications using the UID to conduct their transactions are evolved, anything that
requires modifications to existing software applications and databases will cost a lot.

There are a number of ID cards and identification numbers around the world. They range in lengths from 8
to 16 digits depending on the size of the country. Some encode gender. Many involve a physical card that
has a significant amount of personal content. Some use machine-readable technologies that range from
barcodes to smartcard/RFID.

The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGOM) headed by the External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherji has
approved the setting up of a Unique Identity (UID).The proposed system envisages collaboration with
several government agencies backed by intensive use of information technology. It would help every
individual for a variety of purposes such as better targeting of government’s development schemes,
regulatory purposes, security purposes, banking and financial sector activities.

The Unique Identity (UID) project seeks to assign a UID number to each individual in the country that
would remain as a permanent identifier right from birth to death of the individual. The UID would avoid the
need for a person to produce multiple documents such as proofs of his identity for availing of any
government service, or private services like opening of a bank account. This would end the harassment that
people face for availing of basic government services like issuance of passports, driving licences and
electoral identity cards.

Backed by intensive use of technology, it would greatly facilitate easy verification of a person's identity and
enable a single communication in case of any address changes in all relevant agencies records. It would also
serve as the basis for many e-Governance services incorporating online verification of a person's identity.
UID would enable government to ensure that benefits under various welfare programmes reach the intended
beneficiaries, prevent cornering of benefits by a few people and minimise frauds. It would enable financial
institutions to exchange information regarding defaulters and encourage responsible borrower behaviour.

The scheme looks into the inception, the UID number will be assigned to all voters by building on current
electoral roll data and progressively adding persons below 18 years of age who are not a part of the voters
list in the country. The scheme is designed to leverage intensive usage of the UID for multiple purposes to
provide an efficient and convenient mechanism to update information.

Requirements:

Photographs and biometric data will be added progressively to make the identification foolproof. Easy
registration and information change procedure are for the benefit of the people. Any agency, public or
private, which deals with individuals and incorporates the UID number of each such individual in its
databases, will be able to share information with other agencies which do likewise.

UIDAI would be looking for the details of PAN card, passport, driving license, ration card, voter I-card and
so on. But initially would only cover a small part of the population and the ration card data is subsumed in
voter card data. The telecom user database of 500 million users is an obvious source which can help the
UIDAI to have some part of the personal information checked.

The Indian government’s ambitious and high-tech unique identity or UID project is all set to ride on India’s
500 million strong telecom networks as one of the largest available databases of subscribers anywhere in the
world. So as a logical conclusion, DoT, along with the various telecom service providers, can be major
stakeholder in this process. There are 480 million telephone subscribers in the country at the moment..

It is estimated that the project is expected to take 12 to 18 months to issue its first UID card and will then
accelerate to clock half a billion citizens by the end of 2012. The telecom subscriber base works out
perfectly since estimates place mobile users at well past 700 million by this timeframe. So essentially, if the
UIDAI could convert every known mobile subscriber into a unique identity, it would have achieved a feat
unmatched globally.

Challenges:

1.A major hurdle in implementing the project arises from the daunting task of developing appropriate
software to support such a large database.

2. The UID solution is suppose to have a quick query response system so that one can be searched by
biometrics, particularly to track criminals. Further, the task of physically collecting one billion biometrics,
photographs and other details in a short period of time is a logistics nightmare.

3. Outlets will have to be nominated where people can go to have their data uploaded on to the database.
Here again, the 10 million-strong mobile sales and distribution machinery may hold the key. This is because
India has 97% mobile subscribers in pre-paid category who return month-after-month to renew the charge
on their SIM cards.

As reported in press, Mr. Nilekani has said that the project will provide a unique identification (UID)
number not a card. And hence the authentication can be made by using mobile phones. Once the UID is
issued, one can go for authentication. Now the main problem arises is the time that will be taken for the
process to be completed successfully. The operators themselves rely on address proof and photo ids proof
which are unreliable for as far as linking to unique ID is concern the problem would be worse. Most of the
forms are missing and operators are being penalized for this. Also considering the fact that many people
carry more than two mobiles and also that many of reported numbers may not be operative, it will be
difficult to get meaningful information from mobile customer data beyond 100 million customers.

Taking into consideration all the above challenges Mr.Nilekani has announced to roll over the first UID by
Aug, 2010.