Oracle India to issue national identity cards

The Indian subsidiary of Oracle Corporation, Oracle India, as part of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), is planning to issue national identity cards to citizens of India with assistance from the Union home ministry.

"The project called Multipurpose National Identity Cards (MNIC) is on the anvil and will be assisted by the ministry. Under MNIC, a population register providing a unique National Identity Number to each citizen will be issued," S P S Grover, senior director of Oracle India, said at a press conference.

The NeGP proposes to create an integrated IT infrastructure to make interactions among government to citizen, government to government and government to business become faster.

Some of the areas for which Oracle India has planned NeGP include filing of income tax returns, banking, insurance, employment exchange and civil supplies.

Oracle India works at creating a fully integrated information architecture where all the details of a citizen are incorporated and enables the government departments using multiple IT infrastructure to work together, thus saving time and reducing operational costs.

The company had set up its e-governance centres of excellence in three countries of Asia -- China, Sri Lanka and Philippines.

These centres are similar to the one in Gurgaon, which was jointly set up by Oracle India and Hewlett Packard in 2003.