NPR to enhance coastal security

Friday, December 4, 2009

Union Government's project to create National Population Register (NPR) to enhance coastal security across the country will kick off in coastal areas of Gujarat from next week.
The project through which details and fingerprints of every individual above 15 years residing in coastal areas of the country will be collected along with 2011 census has been advanced to this year for villages in coastline.
In the first phase, villagers residing on the coast in Gujarat along with eight other states will be issued a unique identity number or national identity number while smart cards will be issued to those who are of age 18 years and above at a later stage.
Anand district collectorate will start data collection in 33 villages of Khambhat, Anklav and Borsad from first week of December. "GOI had decided to create NPR which would contain information on specified data items for every individual in the country along with photographs and finger prints of persons of age 15 and above. The data collection for this was to be undertaken along with the 2011 census. However, as part of measures to strengthen the security on the coast of the country, the creation of NPR was advanced to 2009 in the villages on the coastline of nine maritime states and four Union Territories along with issue of identity (smart) cards to usual residents of these areas," Anand district collector R N Joshi told , adding that enumerators appointed for the purpose of data collection in the field will start their work in coastal villages of Anand from December. Equipped with laptops, these enumerators will collect biometric thumb impressions and details of the families residing in the coastal areas through house to house survey.
While villages lying on the coast in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal apart from four Union Territories - Andaman & Nicobar, Lakshadweep, Pondicherry and Daman & Diu are being covered in the first phase, in case of Andaman & Nicobar islands, coastal towns will be also covered in the first phase itself. Coastal towns in the rest of the coastal states will be covered in subsequent phases.

Posted by common man at 12:24 AM 0 comments  

Mahrashtra will be the leader in UID: CM

Monday, November 30, 2009

Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan today said his state would give the best response to the Unique Identification Number project.The project is beneficial for people and there should be no shortcomings while implementing it, Chavan said during a meeting with the Unique Identification Number Authority head Nandan Nilekani in Mumbai.
He also directed the secretary from IT department to make proper preparation before implementation of the project so that the unique number system can be included for various government schemes.The unique identification number would be useful for the people taking benefits from the various government schemes, Nilekani said.The Authority was set up in February to give unique number to each citizen. It would also include name, birth date, address, family details and finger prints of the person.

Posted by common man at 11:27 PM 0 comments  

Unique ID number optional, not proof of citizenship: Nilekani

Sunday, November 29, 2009

The unique ID number of a person under the Unique Identification Number Authority of India project is meant for identifying the person and is not proof of the person's citizenship, project head Nandan Nilekani said in Mumbai.

"The unique ID number is optional and will not be proof of the person's citizenship, Nilekani said during a meeting with senior Maharashtra Government officials at Mantralaya," an official release said. "Nilekani is very hopeful that the unique ID system would cover at least 60 crore Indians within 12 to 18 months," the release said.

Nilekani met Chief Secretary Johny Joseph and other officials for discussing implementation of the unique ID project in Maharashtra. Nilekani expressed confidence that Maharashtra being a major state in IT industry, would lead in implementing the project, an official said.

The Union Government would take help from banks, Election Commission, state governments and other organisations to collect data of people. A high level committee would be appointed headed by state Chief Secretary to monitor the work. The Authority was set up in February to give unique number to each citizen. It would also include name, birth date, address, family details and finger prints of the person.

Posted by common man at 8:54 PM 0 comments  

Unique ID number optional, not proof of citizenship: Nilekani

The unique ID number of a person under the Unique Identification Number Authority of India project is meant for identifying the person and is not proof of the person's citizenship, project head Nandan Nilekani said in Mumbai.

"The unique ID number is optional and will not be proof of the person's citizenship, Nilekani said during a meeting with senior Maharashtra Government officials at Mantralaya," an official release said. "Nilekani is very hopeful that the unique ID system would cover at least 60 crore Indians within 12 to 18 months," the release said.

Nilekani met Chief Secretary Johny Joseph and other officials for discussing implementation of the unique ID project in Maharashtra. Nilekani expressed confidence that Maharashtra being a major state in IT industry, would lead in implementing the project, an official said.

The Union Government would take help from banks, Election Commission, state governments and other organisations to collect data of people. A high level committee would be appointed headed by state Chief Secretary to monitor the work. The Authority was set up in February to give unique number to each citizen. It would also include name, birth date, address, family details and finger prints of the person.

Posted by common man at 8:54 PM 0 comments  

Health card propsal for ID project

Friday, November 27, 2009

The health ministry’s smart card project for the newborn can provide valuable data to the Unique Identification Authority of India, which under former Infosys chief Nandan Nilekani, is preparing a social security card for all Indians.
Nilekani’s unique identity card programme may dovetail into the proposed e-health card project, which junior health minister Dinesh Trivedi is spearheading.
“I had an exhaustive meeting with Nandan Nilekani and officials of the unique identification project and we both agreed that the e-health card project could well form the basis of new data for the UID project, besides dovetailing into it,” Trivedi told.
Besides birth details, the e-health card will have information on immunisation and major illnesses. It is being put together by Sam Pitroda, the brain behind India’s early telecom revolution and currently the chairman of the Knowledge Commission.
Nilekani was appointed the head of the unique identity project with the rank of a cabinet minister by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh earlier this year. His project, which comes after the Mumbai terror attacks, plans to give all Indians a social security card and a number, similar to the system in the US.
The smart card will not only help welfare departments to target beneficiaries more efficiently but also allow police to keep tabs on individuals who have illegally entered the country.
“We have already started a pilot project to collect data for the e-health card in Barrackpore in Bengal (which the minister represents),” said Trivedi. The project would be extended to cover the rest of the country on the basis of the Barrackpore experience.
Nilekani’s work has been hampered by a lack of comprehensive data on Indian citizens, especially the very poor, despite the voter ID and ration cards. Besides, his department is yet to work out a system of getting data on the newborns.

Posted by common man at 12:51 AM 0 comments  

Unisys to partner local IT companies to bid for UID project

Friday, November 20, 2009

UNISYS, one of the biggest government solution providers in the US, plans to bid for India’s national Unique identity (UID) project by partnering with country’s top tech firms including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro and Tech Mahindra.

The company has already deployed identity, biometric and immigration control solutions in countries such as Australia, Malaysia, the US, Panama, Canada and Angola. “We are in advance talks with TCS, Wipro and Tech Mahindra for a local partnership to bid for the national UID project of India.

Interestingly, all our global biometric and fingerprinting solutions, used at FBI, US Border Control and Australian passport authorities, are developed out of our delivery centre in Bangalore. We want to leverage the same now for the India market,” said John Kendall, national security program director, Unisys Global Public Sector. With around $5.2 billion in revenues, Unisys employs 2,000 engineers across its development centres in Bangalore and Hyderabad. “The arrangements for local partnerships will be non-exclusive in nature. Thus we might bid for two or more zones. We will offer our IP in biometric and ID solutions in return to the local partners,” Mr Kendall told , after a meeting with National Informatics Centre director general BK Gairola.

Currently in the conceptualisation and design stage, Unique ID may well be the largest e-governance projects ever rolled out in India. The past few weeks have seen global heads of major IT corporations flying down to India to express interest in the project. These include the likes of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Intel CEO Paul Otellini. “The cost of taking fingerprints from each of the 1.2-billion citizens will be over Rs 5,000 crore, which makes it a sufficiently large project,” Mr Kendall added. As one of the eight Central Mission Mode Projects, UIDAI (Unique ID Authority of India) plans to dole out the first set of ID numbers in 2010. It has also set up an internal panel to identify the kind of biometric identifier to be used for collecting data. Biometric identifiers are essential as duplication of other ID cards is mainly used to embezzle welfare funds. Funds under the National Rural Employment Gurantee Act are prone to fraud, as are the pension funds. In India, the Employee Provident Fund Organisation has offered its database of 42 million citizens for the UID project to start with.

Posted by common man at 9:51 PM 0 comments  

In some time, a 16-digit ID you'll have to memorise

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Over the next couple of years, your best identity will be a 16-digit number. And the number (in a 12+4 format) will not be embossed on a card — you’ll have to memorise it or salt away in a secret place. The number is given after verification of identity through biometric data consisting of 10 fingerprints and an Iris scan.
“It’ll be a neutral number to identify a person clearly, unambiguously,” said Nandan Nilekani, chairman of Unique Identification of Authority of India (UIDAI) at the BangaloreIT.biz event. He said initially, UID would be voluntary and issued only to those who apply. However, partner agencies such as public service institutions, private banks and companies could make it mandatory for their customers.
Nilekani said UIDAI would provide only the foundational infrastructure on top of which partners will host their own applications.“We are not in the application business. It would be offered as an open API (application programming interface) on top of which you can develop education, health, financial services or any other application,” said Nilekani.
The biggest challenge for UIDAI would be collection of biometric data and its “de-duplication” — or back-up — because the sheer scale of the project, which would cover a population of close to 1.2 billion, he said.“Biometric data is a huge challenge. It (the scale of the project) is 10 times any similar project elsewhere in the world. We have to design for that scale,” said Nilekani.
The authority has set a target of issuing five million numbers in four years from the time the UID project is commissioned in late 2010 or early 2011.He said the project would also face major logistical challenges as it would require thousands of servers. “The whole thing will be on cloud (referring to cloud computing, an emerging technology that uses the internet and central remote servers). We will also have to make it work on low bandwidth network because it would be ubiquitous on cellphones and since its authentification is online.”Nilekani said his agency was also worried about security and privacy aspects of the project and would look at ways to make it hack- and fraud-proof.

Posted by common man at 10:45 PM 0 comments  

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)