UID From another perspective
To keep things in perspective I am writing this after reading and watching all the press on the proposed UID. Although laud India for taking such a bold step with the ensuing huge task of defining and implementing the roll out of a UID to over a billion people have asked myself many times how this is going to be done and is there a way it can be done to reap the intended benefits.
I having been working on and off in India since 1993 in the financial transaction space. I have been fortunate to see the many changes and the progress that has been made at all levels of infrastructure, education, social and economic fronts. India has proven the capability and capacity to make changes when needed and the UID with its potential benefits both, socially and economically is another step in India taking global leadership.
Unique India ID as envisaged by government of India through Nandan Nilekani holds huge promise of a revolutionary framework, if rightfully thought out and executed, would create tremendous synergy among key systemic components of overall Indian governance leading to breakthrough levels of inclusion and nation development.
The unique project with unique questions:
However looking at the UID in its entirety I find myself asking some questions which I think need to be answered and have not seen either the question or the answers in any press or other media releases. Questions like what are the objectives to be achieved socially, economically and politically and the most important question what does the citizens get out of this initiative. This question of what does the citizen get is paramount to the success of this initiative as their participation will ultimately deem the success or failure. I would assume that some of the services will become more efficient and therefore faster. I could also assume that the amount of paper forms to fill out would go down and therefore make it easier to do transactions with the various agencies.
The answers to these questions defines the scope of the project and frames the types of data that needs to be captured in a way that it can be mined to produce the desired benefits. There is also much talk about the value and links to other Government agencies some of which have their own form of ID specific to that agency, that then leads me to the question if there are agencies with ID’s in existence, which agency has the most penetration into the population and is most frequently used so as to facilitate building the database of the population? I have read that one of the suggestions is the Know your Customer data used in the banking sector as the basis for this and do not see how that facilitates meeting this objective as the majority of the population does not deal with banks as evidenced by the growth in the Micro-finance industry in India.
Thinking about this question and what could be the answer? I came to the conclusion that the most used ID with the greatest penetration in the population is the Ration Card. Although the Ration card is at the family level once you have identified the family you can then identify the immediate family hierarchy, the number of people in their household ,their gender, age, and other data that might be of value like .A notice can be sent to an individual when he/she is required to get an ID card
Data security will need the most serious thought
There is another question, that I keep asking myself especially when I see a number of large companies all having relevant technologies in managing massive databases such as Yahoo interested in the UID initiative. It made me ask the question ) is the best approach to build a single massive data base to store, authenticate, and mine the data.
Or is there an existing infrastructure, protocol being used by an industry that can be a model to make the task easier and manageable. Having most of my career being in retail and payment industry I concluded there is. It is the model used by the financial payment industry as implemented by Visa and MasterCard having a global network with the appropriate protocols and processes. I am assuming that these protocols and processes are the same required for the UID initiative and that is to identify an individual and authenticating that this is in fact that individual at any point of transaction. it appears to me that a similar protocol and process fits the UID like a debit or credit transaction which is the interaction of the point of transaction with the decision maker of that transaction to authenticate that this is the person authorized to make this transaction and is this in fact a legitimate transaction. As everyone knows, one of the biggest issues faced by an initiative like this is identity theft, and , the potential is the same with the UID initiative as the ID must be authenticated and the data must be secured. In a financial transaction where authentication takes place in authenticating the requestor and authenticating the merchant .The Cardholder data used to complete and settle this transaction must be secured as is mandated under PCI DSS and the EMV Chip card protocol. These protocols and standards are specifically designed to authenticate and transact a financial transaction in a secure manner as well as protect the cardholder from have his personal data compromised and used in a fraudulent manner.
I have also seen and heard that the plan to use biometrics such as a thumb print for authentication has a 0.4% failure rate and given the population this is not an acceptable failure rate. Since this is considered the best technology for authentication available a solution may be to have 2 levels of authentication with the second being an encrypted pin
It’s not the change per se people resist, but the process by which it is done. To further look at how this infrastructure can be leveraged, assuming some type of card will be issued and that card will be able to be read by some device such as a merchant POS, then the question is -can this be done? And the answer is yes -as all merchant terminals are Chip Card enabled and programmable and have an application that run in them that meets the specific requirements of the merchant and the bank. This means there is a terminal base in existence that can be leveraged provided the banks, Visa and MasterCard agree. This then makes the only cost at the individual level, the cost of issuing the Chip card. I am advocating Chip card as it is more secure and less prone to compromise due to the encryption capability.
Keeping in line with the infrastructure as mentioned, does it make sense to do this at the central government level, without considering doing it at the state level. It appears to me, it will be more politically correct to let each state manage its population and get the benefits and implement programs as the data mining reveals the need. The fact that people in India are becoming increasingly mobile; India already has a method whereby, you can identify which state you come from with the car license plate. If you were to have the authentication switch in each state and preceded each ID number with the State as you do on a car license plate, and a card came into a switch that was from another state, you would simply switch it to that state for authentication. If a card consistently comes from another state you can then investigate if this person has relocated and require a new UID for to represent the state where they are living, as well as all the other cards such as ration card.
In conclusion there is no right or wrong answer; it just turns out to be Time and Money to implement a project of this magnitude. So in my simplistic view I feel better having given my view and asking and answering my own questions. Coming from an intense payments background some could say I am narrow minded and that might be true, but one thing I am sure of leveraging something similar is better than reinventing the wheel.
About Monte Harris: 
Monte Harris is an American National currently based out of Chennai India, is the Founder and Managing Director of Owe Global solutions (p) Ltd (www.owegs.com) . Owe Global Solutions (OGS) is Global banking technology company focused in the business of “Facilitating secured Data transaction processing”.
Monte also served as Chairman and MD of Verifone India for 6 years building their Software development center from less than a 100 engineers to over 400 engineers and building the prestigious Verifone technology park, which were part of early IT revolution in India., thereafter was the global Engineering Head for eFunds in Chennai ,India (now Fidelity National information services) till he founded Owe Global Solutions in early 2008.
