UID’s potential to enable new citizen services

New charter of citizen services using disruptive UID

How hi-tech can India and its masses get—a vision of the disruptive technologies using the UID framework By Harikrishna S. Aravapalli

Harikrishna S. Aravapalli

UID (Unique Identification Number) is a unique number that can be issued to every citizen of India. This number can be verified and authenticated in an online manner, for various purposes related to the needs and rights of a citizen. The UID project is being undertaken by the Central Government under a special body called Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The UID is fundamentally similar to the Social Security Number (SSN) in the US. However, it leverages existing biometric technologies, to make it not only unique but also easily identifiable.

While the main purpose of the UID is the fair and just distribution of the various social benefits to various sections of Indian society as per their rights and eligibility, there are also a number of interesting day-to-day applications possible using the UID Framework and this is the main topic of this article.

The vision of UID

The vision here is to ensure that every Indian has an official identity, with sufficient details stored about that citizen. The UID system can interface with the hundreds of government and large public and private sector organizations, for better handling their verification, validation, allocation, distribution, recovery and law enforcement processes.

Need for UID

The government of India has a large number of social benefit schemes which have been in force for over 30 years. Most of these schemes are aimed at the under-privileged, either economically or socially, sections of Indian society. However, in order to avoid the misuse of these social benefit schemes (at the cost of the State Exchequer), a lot of checks and balances were also put in place—one of them being that the recipient of these social benefits should produce the required and relevant identity, to avail of these social benefits.

This required and relevant identity, has taken the form of an Identity Card. To obtain it, one has to go through the tedious process of filling up the forms, attaching a photo and getting someone to attest the same along with other formalities. This is clearly beyond the scope of the under-privileged section of society for the following reasons:

• Total lack of awareness of these facilities to get an identity card
• Lack of awareness of the social benefits that are available to them
• Lack of awareness of the method or means to obtain these social benefits
• Underprivileged are basically illiterate and are not equipped to obtain these benefits by themselves
• Underprivileged are either busy earning their daily wages for survival or are idle with no money to carry out these formalities to obtain an identity card and the subsequent social benefits

Also to obtain these social benefits and other fundamental rights, there are a multitude of identity cards and numbers, which can be confusing indeed.

This is where a proactive measure by the Union Government of India to provide a UID to every Indian with clearly identifiable parameters such as biometric fingerprints, IRIS scans, photographs, etc. can help in providing a common interface to the citizen, across various government agencies, public sector organizations and even the private sector in the long run.

Scope of disruptive technologies using UID

Apart from the planned objectives of providing for the fair and just distribution of social benefits to Indian citizens using UID, it is also possible to have a host of interesting and useful day-to-day commercial applications, which can make India a smarter place to live in.

Some of these smart commercial applications leveraging the UID Framework are:

• Intelligent local social networking kiosks: These could be touchscreen-based kiosks wherein you can go and register biometrically. An application of this is when you go to visit (either for personal or official work) a different city or area other than your usual city or area. In that case, you can register yourself at these kiosks and it will tell you, based on your personal profile, where you can find restaurants, entertainment, places to visit, the addresses of your relatives, shopping options based on your choice and level of privacy to be revealed. This would be a most disruptive technology for the now ubiquitous mobile phone.
• Multi-User Touch Screen Phone Panels (MUTSPP): Here you may have a personal mobile phone profile in the cloud (as in cloud computing). Whenever you want to access your mobile phone, you can visit a touch-screen phone panel and login with the UID (either with a card or biometrically). If authenticated, then your profile as a phone user would be available on the touchscreen phone panel and you would be able to access your mobile phone. This would minimize the need to carry the mobile phone all the time or alternatively also increase the access to the phone even when the physical handset is not with you physically.
• Modern day 911 panel: This panel, using the UID biometrically, help those in a disaster on the highway, find children who are missing by training them to identify themselves at the nearest UID based 911 panel, tracing criminals on the run (by placing 911 type panels secretively at key locations).
• UID-based payment systems: These systems can access your bank accounts based on the voluntary use of your UID biometrically, to enable payments either in case of emergencies or as a safer means of carrying your finances with you while on the go (as compared to debit cards, credit cards and cash which can be lost or stolen).
• Green tax credits: With the single source of identification that UID is expected to provide, it becomes possible to introduce tax rebates at individual levels for those citizens who support the various environment and green initiatives. This could be in the form of purchasing environment-friendly products, using facilities or resources that are renewable or sustainable. Citizens can register their contribution to the environment or green initiative using their UID biometrically and avail of the various rebates and benefits under the environment and green initiatives.
• UID for corporations: Once the UID framework and infrastructure is in place, there is even the possibility of spawning a UID framework for the various public and private corporations. This can spawn off another string of applications to track financial irregularities, carbon emissions, carbon credits, corporate social responsibilities and other issues of interest at the macro-economic and macro-social levels.

These are just a few of the interesting and amazing possibilities with the introduction of the UID in India.

Dawn of the convergence era in India

The onset of the UID for every citizen of India could be the dawn of the convergence era, where there is scope for widespread convergence of public and private sector services, law enforcement, financial transactions and most importantly ensuring that social benefits reach the masses.

While there are a host of identity cards across various government agencies in India, these have a limited and confined scope of use. However, in modern society which is increasingly becoming networked (at least at the corporate, urban and semi-urban levels), it is all the more possible to have lateral services across these various agencies, irrespective of location or agency. The UID framework is poised to address these cross-connections across agencies, technologies, services and sections of the population.

After all India is a unique nation where 80% of the archaic villages live back-to-back with the 20% of the modern day, tech savvy Urban Indian. UID, when it meets its objective, will not only stand for unique identification, but also stand for the unification of the Indian Diaspora as most of India, is basically migrant by nature.

About the author: The author is a Solution Architect at IBM's Business Analytics and Optimization-Center of Competence (BAO CoC).