i202 Fall 2009 School of Information, UC Berkeley

“Unique ID will enable more effective public delivery”

An interesting and a 202-issues loaded interview of the Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, Nandan Nilekani. As mentioned on this blog before, UID (Unique Identification Number) is a recently finalized initiative by the Government of India to create and manage a centralized identification system for all the adult citizens and residents of India, which can be utilized for a variety of identification purposes.

The interviewer raises several pertinanant issues regarding the initiative such as:

1. How do you define the uniqueness of a citizen/resident?

2. If we're talking about biometrics (which we are), do we have the technology to support it at such a massive scale?

3. Is the initiative worth the cost? (for a developing and poor country like India) Is it a one time investment?

4. How can you ensure that the database that you are creating will be secure and that it won't be misused and will not result in an invasion of privacy?

5. Keeping in mind the point above, what are the attributes that are saved for each person?

Some of the issues may be unique to India (given its scale, economy and other specific factors) and for others, learnings from similar systems that have been implemented already can be taken.