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| National Population Register to start biometrics data collection from Dec |
| Shivani Shinde / Mumbai Jun 23, 2010, 00:35 IST |
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The National Population Register (NPR) will start collecting biometric data of the country’s entire adult population between December 2010 and January 2011.
NPR will be the biggest biometric database — including face, fingerprint and iris recognition of the over 1 billion Indian population — that has ever been made. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has been established by the government to implement the scheme and assign unique numbers to all citizens.
“We have an agreement with the Registrar General of India that the NPR exercise under the 2011 census would collect biometrics data as well. At present we are in the first phase of NPR which gets the basic information of an individual. In the second phase we will collect the biometrics data. This will start sometime around December 2010 and January 2011,” said R S Sharma, director general UIDAI.
Sharma believes collecting data in phases will be easier instead of doing it simultaneously with the current process of census. “You have to keep in mind the logistical hurdles that this project has. It is not going to be a simple and trivial thing to collect biometrics data. It’s a good idea to collect textual data first and digitise it before adding the biometrics data.”
UIDAI had recently signed up with India’s largest life insurance firm, the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), as one of its registrars. Sharma said having a multiple registrar strategy is a must for the project.
“This will also in a way avoid the duplication process. The idea is, whosoever collects the data first will get the number and if the individual tries to provide his biometric information again (to get more than one number), he will not be successful,” Sharma said.
He is also confident that the IT system will be in place before August 2010 for the roll-out of Aadhaar — the name for the UID project. “The government has committed in parliament that Aadhaar roll-out will happen in the next 12-18 months and this period is August 2010 and February 2011. We are on schedule on our capability to achieve this target.”
“By July 31 we will have all the respective vendors in place, that includes data centre and the biometrics provider,” he added. UIDAI has appointed MindTree for application development and services and BPO firm Intelenet for its call centre.
The managed services provider (MSP), who will manage the database, will be signed only after the infrastructure is in place. “We are expecting to sign-up with a MSP by October this year. The idea is to get all the other infrastructure in place. That is the data centre, the biometric systems and the database as well. Once the MSP is on board they will take over the entire operations and be the single point of access. Unlike some of our other contracts the time-period for the MSP will be medium- to long-term,” said Sharma.
UIDAI is in talks with the Reserve Bank of India, the Indian Banks Association and others for the tie-ups. On their part UIDAI will provide client enrolment software to the registrars and also provide de-duplication services and provide a UID number to a registrar.
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