UIDAI looking for agency to gauge public sentiment on Aadhaar card

Even as the Supreme Court’s final verdict on the constitutional validity to India’s largest identity project is yet to be out, its implementing agency is looking for firms to gauge public sentiment about Aadhaar. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has put out a request for proposal (RFP), calling media monitoring firms to track press coverage for Aadhaar and submit regular reports to the authority. 

The RFP document mentions that the agency, which gets the contract, will be employed for an initial period of one year and its job will be to monitor all national, regional and vernacular newspapers and TV news channels. The agency will also have to monitor online news and magazines, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, micro-sites and social networks for discussions on subjects related to Aadhaar, the document stated. 

The agency is supposed to provide daily reports on all these mediums in a soft copy format to the UIDAI between 9 am and 4 pm. Additionally, the UIDAI has also stated that it can also demand hard copies of media coverage from time to time and the agency will have to provide those within the stipulated time. Another deliverable in this regard is a pendrive with a copy of all news reports archive at the end of the year. 

The authority has also set strict parameters for quality as it will cut 2 per cent of the monthly retainer fee from the empanelled agency if it fails to report news clippings pertaining to the organisation the same day. For a second offence, the penalty will be 5 per cent of the fee, while a third offence could result in cancellation of the contract, the UIDAI stated. 

The agency is also expected to maintain confidentiality and no information gathered during the course of association with the UIDAI is expected to be revealed to a third party. 

“Except with the prior written consent of the UIDAI, the agency shall not at any timecommunicate to any person or entity any confidential information acquired in the course of the services, nor shall the agency make public any such information gathered in the course of, or as a result of, the Services,” the RFP document states. 

The document seems to be setting a tough task for agencies, as it seeks to monitor all regional and vernacular newspapers as well, apart from the mainstream media. There are more than 149,000 registered and verified newspapers and magazines in India, according to data published by the Office of the Registrar of Newspapers for India. 

A source with knowledge of the matter said that the authority is looking to monitor press as a regular function observed in most companies. “It’s not something new. Any big company runs with a full media monitoring team to make sure that their messaging is right and the UIDAI is doing the same. Their mandate may be much tighter and monitoring all these newspapers could prove to be difficult but that’s not to say it can’t be done by a competent agency,” the source added. 

The authority has set August 6 as the last date for final submission of bids, even though the timeline for final onboarding of the agency is yet to be announced. The UIDAI didn’t respond to queries sent by Business Standard at the time of going to press.