No unique ID numbers, says Nilekani

Paying some extra money allows people to choose the number they want for their vehicles or cellphones. But there will be no such provision when it comes to the unique identification (UID) number which the government will implement soon. The unique ID numbers would be generated by the system randomly and could not be changed by any means, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) chairman Nandan Nilekani asserted here today.

Speaking at the BangaloreIT.Biz 2009, Nilekani said the UID number would have no intelligence and there would not be any special provision to get a desired number.

UIDAI plans to come out with a manual which will provide detailed guidelines to the organisations that are planning to use the unique identity numbers to make them UID-ready. Nilekani said the manual which was expected to be made public in the next six months, would help the partners to modify the existing applications in their systems to make it compatible with the UIDAI software.

“If you are going to become our partners, and want to put the UID numbers in the database, then you will have to fit our enrolment software into your applications ... all these will come in a manual on how to become UID ready which will be out in about six months from now,” Nilekani said.

On the progress of the unique ID project, Nilekani said two committees had been appointed to expedite the process. The first committee on biometric is being headed by National Informatics Centre Director General B K Gairola, while the data standards and verification committee which oversees the data enrollment and verification process, is being headed by N Vittal, the former chief vigilance commissioner of India.

Both the committees were expected to come out with their reports in the next couple of months, Nilekani added.

Besides, UIDAI is soon going to appoint a consultant who will help it in preparing the request for proposals and selecting the managed services provider who will manage the data centre.

The UID is a complex and ambitious project with technology sophistication and scale of 1.2 billion people. The department would work on private-public partnership (PPP) model for various tasks and process. The UIDAI will be the regulatory authority managing a central ID Data Repository (CIDR) which will issue UID numbers, update resident information and authenticate the identity of the residents as required.

Nilekani said that the first set of UID numbers was expected to be issued within the next 12 to 18 months from August 12 this year. In the first 5-6 years, UIDAI aims to provide unique identity numbers to at least 600 million residents. Even though UID has not been made mandatory in the beginning, the government would revisit the decision when the number becomes ubiquitous in the next 5-10 years, he added.