India's digital backbone for vaccination is remarkable: Nandan Nilekani

Says India is the only nation where anyone gets a digital vaccination certificate immediately. This can be printed, can be on one's smartphone or in the Digital Locker, and is QR coded

India has a digital backbone around its Covid-19 vaccination that is "truly remarkable," said Infosys co-founder and non-executive chairman of its Board, Nandan Nilekani, at a virtual event on Tuesday.

In conversation with Microsoft India president Anant Maheshwari, Nilekani discussed the role of technology amid the pandemic, how digital skilling is now more important than ever and how technology can be used to scale up ongoing vaccination efforts. The event was the first edition of ExpertSpeak, a curated dialogue series with industry experts, organised by Microsoft.

"We are the only country in the world where everybody gets a digital vaccination certificate immediately. And this can be printed, it can be on the person's smartphone, it can be kept in the Digital Locker, (and) is encrypted, digitally signed, and it is QR coded so that we can authenticate that certificate anywhere- offline or online," said Nilekani.

Appreciating the opening up of the vaccine as announced by the government on Monday, Nilekani said if there are 50,000 vaccination points, India can scale up to vaccinating 5-10 million people a day.

"Before this, we were at two to three million a day, and a lot of credit goes to Ram Sewak Sharma, who was my colleague at UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India), he took over NHA (National Health Authority) just about a couple of months back, and brought in a lot of technological enhancements and just made the system scalable," he added.

Nilekani also said that facial authentication is being used for vaccination and not face recognition. "What is being used will be face authentication by comparing your photograph when you give your Aadhaar number, so it's no different from a fingerprint authentication, iris or OTP authentication," he said.

Digital skilling is a step towards bridging the existing digital divide in the country, said Maheshwari.

As part of this, Microsoft has helped over 30 million people in 249 countries and territories gain access to digital skills, of which close to 3 million are from India, Maheshwari said. This tops its initial goal of 25 million last June. Microsoft is also extending its commitment to help 250,000 companies globally make a skills-based hire in 2021.

"It's a very big impact in terms of improving the skills. Also, I think it's really about the government, industry, and companies coming together with the Government of India to really think about cyber security is a very big part in bringing government officials around that. NSDC is  working very closely to create more than a lakh of (skilled) youth in the country. And we're also working with Nasscom on creating more than a million people who are trained on AI. There are a lot of initiatives that all of us have to continue, but this is still a drop in the ocean," said Maheshwari.