UID

exceptions, finger, fraud, ID, India, UID

India: UID applications without biometrics highly likely fraudulent

Sometimes it seems as though headline writers don’e even bother to read the articles.

India removes 384K Aadhaar biometric IDs (ZDNet) — Properly speaking, they weren’t biometric ID’s because they were created under the “biometric exceptions” provision that allowed for enrollments to be created without an acceptable biometric identifier. That provision was exploited by unscrupulous registrars who created fake enrollments for which they were paid.

The “biometric exception” was created out of necessity to account for those with unreadable fingerprints or for those who lacked fingers or hands altogether, however three quarters of the IDs generated under the biometric exception clause have been found to be fraudulent.

It is also interesting to note that if UID lacked a provision for the collection of a biometric identifier, it is unlikely that the large scale fraud would have been detected at all.

India, UID

UID: Over a quarter of a billion served

Over 28 cr Aadhaar numbers generated till Feb (Deccan Herald)

“28,78,41,507 Aadhaar numbers have been generated as on February 28, 2013,” Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and Planning Rajeev Shulka said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.

Andhra Pradesh generated 5.36 crore Aadhaar numbers — the highest in the country–, followed by Maharashtra at 4.85 crore, Kerala at 2.29 crore, Madhya Pradesh at 1.85 crore, Rajasthan at 1.49 crore, Punjab at 1.34 crore, Jharkhand at 1.33 crore, Delhi at 1.29 crore and Tamil Nadu at 1.28 crore, he said.

The government has taken various steps such as increasing number of registrars from 90 to over 100 for speedy Aadhaar generation, uploading resident data packets within 20 days of enrolement, and engaging multiple printers to print Aadhaar letters, the Minister said.

But, there are some problems during enrolment, he said.

“Availability of proper infrastructure such as access to villages, public buildings for enrolment electricity, availability of verifiers appointed by the registrars, are some of the problems being faced during Aadhaar enrolment.”

corruption, enrollment, India, UID

Consequences of the Coriander kerfuffle?

300 errant UID agents blacklisted (DNA India h/t @M2SYS)

Following complaints about agents doing the rounds of Aadhaar enrolment centres seeking money from applicants, the state government and UniqueIdentification Authority of India (UIDAI) have blacklisted around 300 such errant operators in Mumbai.

“Around 300 operators have been blacklisted in Mumbai,” said Ajay Bhushan Pandey, Deputy Director General, UIDAI, adding that this had been done because of complaints regarding money being sought from applicants, proliferation of agents at centres, irregularities and quality issues.

Following such high-profile cases as giving vegetables ID’s (and them presumably charging the government for it), a purge of unscrupulous and/or ineffective UID enrollment agents has been a long time coming.

A scam involving shaking enrolees down would be far more difficult to detect using automated means than determining which agencies showed higher-than-average rates of submitting bogus enrollments, so I’m glad the UIDAI is willing and able to send actual agents to enrollment centers where there are reports of agents soliciting bribes.

database, India, technology, UID

A peek at the tech requirements for India’s UID project

Why is India’s UID Aadhar a Big Data challenge and opportunity? (Information Week)

Everything about India’s UID project or Aadhar as it is commonly known is ambitious. Giving a unique identity to 1.2 billion residents is a challenging task. No country has done a project of this scale – which is why this project is being watched keenly by everyone – not only in India, but the rest of the world too.

Let’s look at some interesting facts about Aadhar. The scope is to capture 12 billion fingerprints, 1.2 billion photographs, and 2.4 billion iris scans. The file size for each enrollment is approximately 5 Mb. When you summarize this for 1.2 billion people, the file size would be measured in petabytes. This is just the storage part.

De-duplication, also addressed in the article, is the really crazy part, though.

ROI, UID, welfare

The magic game-changer

Direct benefit transfer: Not a panacea, but a likely game changer (VC Circle)

Here’s the conclusion:

Yet, the basic idea of providing entitlement benefits directly to the beneficiary bank account through technologically superior, cheaper and more efficient distribution channels can hardly be questioned. The process is likely to have large positive macroeconomic externalities. Unfortunately, rather than deliberating on the larger issues, the ongoing debate on DBT is getting bogged down in the discussion of ulterior motives, teething and implementation concerns and thereby missing the wood for the trees.

I’d emphasize “cheaper”. The discussion of the macroeconomic externalities is something you don’t see too much of when UID is discussed.

This is one of those times where the temptation to just poach the whole article is strong. Click through and read the whole thing. There’s not a wasted paragraph among the eight in this compact and thoughtful piece.

India, NPR, UID

UID-NPR update and rehash

A recap of an issue we’ve discussed here in the past. There are still some signs that the rivalry between NPR & UID continues, but the temperature of it seems to have gone down a bit.

Confused over Aadhaar and NPR, Cabinet sets up Group of Ministers (Economic Times)

Confusion over whether the unique identity number is a number, a card or both, and concerns over UID and the National Population Register duplicating functions prompted the Cabinet to refer UPA-2’s ambitious project to a group of ministers.

The Cabinet discussion on Thursday revealed that the ministerial panel was not immune from contradictory and blurred perceptions about Aadhaar, as UID is known, with some ministers saying they had received a card along with a number.

For earlier posts mentioning UID & NPR together click here (Google advanced search).

adoption, immigration, India, politics, UID, US

India’s UID affecting the political dialogue elsewhere

The US political issue of whether or how best to confer some sort of legal status upon some individuals currently living within the United States without that legal status is getting a lot of attention. The United States’s last attempt at sweeping immigration reform was in 1986. Since then, it’s been baby steps.

The linked article provides more detail for why that might be, but the part that caught my eye is the basic formulation: “If India can execute a biometric project for over a billion people, it should be possible to apply biometrics to this, far less daunting, challenge.”

For example:
Michael Barone commentary: Stars are aligning for a law on immigration that might work (Columbus Dispatch)

So what are the reasons to think such legislation would produce different results from those of the 1986 law?
…
[…S]omething feasible now that wasn’t back then: an identity card linked to a database with biometric identification. India is now creating such a system for its 1.2 billion people. Why can’t we do that for many fewer immigrants and visa holders?

India’s UID project is giving the rest of the world confidence that long-neglected issues can be addressed through a combination of political will and new technology. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more examples from around the world.

ATM, bank, banking, India, UID

India: Finance Ministry urges banks to adopt biometric ATM’s

Finger print based ATMs coming soon (Hindustan Times)

Your finger print or eye scan may soon be enough to withdraw cash from ATMs. For that, you will require a biometric based Aadhaar number. In a bid to encourage higher enrollment for unique identification or Aadhaar number, the finance ministry has asked all public sector and rural banks to speed up setting up biometric cash dispensers.

ID, India, UID

UID in the NYT

The New York Times takes a look at India’s UID program.

India Aims to Keep Money for Poor Out of Others’ Pockets (New York Times)

India has more poor people than any nation on earth, but many of its antipoverty programs end up feeding the rich more than the needy. A new program hopes to change that.

On Jan. 1, India eliminated a raft of bureaucratic middlemen by depositing government pension and scholarship payments directly into the bank accounts of about 245,000 people in 20 of the nation’s hundreds of districts, in a bid to prevent corrupt state and local officials from diverting much of the money to their own pockets. Hundreds of thousands more people will be added to the program in the coming months.

There’s an iris vs. retina faux pas but the article is more about politics and political science than technology.

fingerprint, ID, India, iris, modality, UID

India: UID going multi-modal

Iris scan to add layer to Aadhaar authentication (Business Standard)

Iris

One of the biggest purported flaws of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)’s Aadhaar programme was the risk of deterioration of beneficiaries’ fingerprint quality, especially given the country’s large farm worker population, among the main target groups.

But, almost in sync with the government’s plan of rolling out the ambitious direct benefits transfer (DBT) scheme nationwide, starting with 20 districts from January 1, the UIDAI is finishing work on introducing iris-based authentication in the first quarter of 2013, said a senior UIDAI official.

corruption, development, India, poverty, technology, UID

India: We have a lift off

After initial hiccups, the government’s ambitious direct benefits transfer programme through a unique identification number kicked off smoothly today, though the number of transactions carried out by the banks on the first day remained low. About 2,000 beneficiaries were transferred an amount of Rs 35 lakh on the Aadhaar platform, but the figure is expected to go up tomorrow. The programme is aimed at covering two lakh beneficiaries.

Photo of UID taking off. Source: NASA

After several years of preparation and on-the-ground effort, the National Payments Corporation of India disbursed the first government payments directly to individuals using the UID (Aadhaar) platform. This is a big deal.

We’ve repeatedly used the “moon shot” metaphor here to describe the ID management projects India has been working on for the last several years.

The audio and video of UID won’t be as dramatic. The narrative won’t be as clear-cut. There won’t be a cathartic moment where a “one giant step” speech is appropriate. So, in this sense, UID falls short of the metaphor. [The audio of the Apollo 11 launch that inspired this post’s title is here (NASA.gov; 1 min.)]

But if the UID project succeeds it will have overcome daunting technical, logistical and managerial challenges to have a tangible effect on the material well being of hundreds of millions of people, awakening the rest of the developing world to new possibilities to simultaneously help the most vulnerable and reduce the corruption that keeps much of the world poor. Few government initiatives could boast of as much.

UID also reminds me of the great global efforts to eradicate small pox and polio in that they had to, quite literally, touch everyone.

audit, database, India, UID

UIDAI tightens enrollment requirements

It looks like about 94% of the UID numbers issued without biometrics have had to be cancelled.

UIDAI cancels 3.84 lakh bogus Aadhaar enrolments (CIOL)

The UIDAI has cancelled 3.84 lakh Aadhaar numbers which were reportedly prepared under the biometric clause.

According to biometric clause, the authorised enrolment agencies have been granted the permission to enrol people without taking biometrics like fingerprints and iris scan. But in any case, the enrolment agency must procure photograph and demographic information of the people. As of now, 4.10 lakh Aadhaar numbers have been generated under the biometric exception clause, out of which the UIDAI has directed to scrap 3.84 lakh Aadhaar numbers.

This isn’t too surprising. Last July, the story of UID numbers being issued to plants got quite a bit of attention and it was clear then that changes were coming to the process by which the UIDAI dealt with the private entities that underpin the enrollment function.

With today’s news and the accompanying hard numbers, it seems that there was an audit designed to put some specificity to what everyone knew was a flaw in a system where unscrupulous enrollment agencies could create large volumes of fake enrollments for which they would then be paid.

Now the numbers are in and the scale of the ID fraud possible in the absence of a biometric identifier is known.

The remedies are pretty clear.

Issuing a UID number without biometrics should only be done under very particular circumstances and with a very high degree of oversight.

Firms participating in the enrollment process should face incentives and sanctions based upon their performance. That could mean bonuses for firms with very good performance, penalties for bad data practices, and worse for those actively committing fraud.

The good news is that database technology makes the technical part of figuring out who’s doing what fairly straightforward. The hard part, as always, will be agreeing on the nature of the carrots and sticks to be deployed.

fraud, ID, India, UID, welfare

India: UID exposing ghost welfare beneficiaries and what the numbers mean

Aadhar helps weed out fake ration cards in Andhra  (The Indian Express)

Linking the public distribution system to Aadhar has been unearthing a huge number of fake or duplicate ration cards and civil supplies officials are now counting their savings per ration shop. In some Andhra Pradesh districts where enrolment is high, officials have counted savings up to Rs 10-12 crore every month.

“In Hyderabad district we are seeing savings of Rs 40,000 per fair-price shop per month,” says commissioner of civil supplies Harpreet Singh. “In East Godavari, it is Rs 30,000. Since the online centralised data cannot be manipulated at shop level, only the intended beneficiaries are able to take rations. Both the Centre and the state, which give heavy subsidies, are saving.”

I haven’t done this in a while.

Of course, the numbers up there are big and it seems pretty bad but what does it mean?

First the money:
Rs 11 crore = 110,000,000 rupees = USD 2 million  (2,005,424.95 as of today)

Then what the money means in context:
India GDP – per capita (PPP): $3,700 (2011 est.)

Two million dollars represents the annual earnings of 542 average Indians being stolen from the welfare system in just this one type of scheme (fake cards at ration shops) every month in this one district alone.

To compare apples to apples (years to years), that’s the annual productive capacity of 6,504 Indians disappearing into the pockets of fraudsters in a single district every year.

There are 640 districts in India.

ID, India, UID, UIDAI

UIDAI success is national progress

Saral Money, an initiative being leveraged by VISA on Aadhaar platform, will ease money transactions (CIOL)

RS Sharma UIDAI DG informed that 27 crore [270 million] individuals have been enrolled while 22 crore Aadhaar cards have been issued so far. Sharma said that they are currently enrolling 2 crore citizens on a monthly basis. ”The objective is to facilitate banking access to the common man. The Saral Money allows people to transact through handheld devices available at local neighborhood shops,” he said.

Kind of like a fingerprint Western Union. Much more at the link.

ID, India, UID

“The best way to kill a good idea is to implement it badly”

‘Cash transfer’ in urban centres for foodgrains, LPG, etc., is better than picking some remote rural district only to claim that the scheme has failed. (The Hindu Business Line)

The best way to kill a good idea is to implement it badly. One hopes that direct cash transfer of government funds under various welfare schemes to the bank accounts of their intended beneficiaries does not meet this fate. For, it is too good an idea to be discarded, notwithstanding all the vested interests that stand to lose from its success. All the more reason, then, for the Government to take extra care in demonstrating its feasibility on the ground, thereby silencing the prophets of doom – including those for whom welfare programmes are a means for lining their own pockets. It is in this context that reports of beneficiaries not receiving any money in their bank accounts, even in select blocks where direct payment of subsidy against kerosene purchases at market rates is being tried out on a pilot scale, make for disturbing reading. It is almost as though there is organised sabotage at work.”

The unnamed author of this opinion piece certainly seems to understand the stakes involved in the next phase of India’s UID project.

Things are about to get real.

enrollment, ID, ID management, India, UID, verification

India UID: Things are about to get real

In simple terms, an ID project has two parts: enrollment and verification.

Enrollment is the process by which a user is vetted by, entered into, or purchases an ID management regime.

Verification is when the ID management solution actually has to fulfill its intended function.

You don’t really know for certain if the key you just had made is going to open your front door until you try it. You won’t know if the combination lock you just bought works until you try it. And India won’t know how smoothly the UID-based system can provide a transition away from the subsidy system to the cash transfer system until it gives it a try.

Verification is where the rubber meets the road and India is about to take its first UID test drive as Dr Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, announced last month the launch of a direct electronic cash transfer scheme leveraging India’s Unique Identification (UID) Programme. (FutureGov)

The government has announced that direct cash transfer of subsidies to the bank accounts of the recipients would start in 51 out of India’s 659 districts from January 2013 and would be gradually extended to the rest of the country by April 2014. (The Hindu)

Hopefully things go well. It’s hard to overstate the challenge involved or the importance of the project’s success.

banking, ID, India, transactions, UID, welfare

India: Direct cash transfers for welfare beginning January 1

Aadhaar-based cash transfer in 51 districts (Hindustan Times)

The government will launch direct cash transfer in 51 districts from 1 January and cover the entire country by April 2014, just ahead of the next Lok Sabha elections. The Prime Minister’s Office on Friday cleared the roadmap to implement the UPA-2’s ambitious project that could see the government crediting nearly Rs. 2,000 billion — around 40 % of Centre’s plan budget — straight into bank accounts of millions of beneficiaries of government schemes across the country.

For some background on the pilot projects and how they have gone, check out this article at the Deccan Herald. The headline is pretty harsh but the article is very thorough.

Exciting times for UID and India.

ID, India, UID, welfare

Cash, with strings

Why India should hand out cash, rather than fuel and food, to the needy (The Economist)

As other countries have discovered, handing out cash is more efficient and less susceptible to corruption than handing out food or subsidising fuel. But as long as many of India’s 1.2 billion people lacked proper identification, let alone bank accounts, cash transfers were impracticable.

Now technology offers a powerful solution. A huge project is getting millions of Indians biometrically identified and opening accounts for them. Nandan Nilekani, an IT billionaire who is the brains behind it, expects that by the end of 2014 600m Indians will be enrolled, creating the infrastructure for a system of cash welfare.

The Economist has been consistent in its support of UID and welfare reform in India.

UPDATE: More from The Economist
Money where your mouth is: A debate is growing about how to get welfare to the needy

India, round-up, UID

India Round-up

Security equipment industry grew by 25% in last 3 yrs – Compared to 7% for the rest of the world. (moneycontrol.com)

India tries handing out cash to poor – Those waiting on the cash probably want somebody to try harder. (news24)

Jharkhand: Slow state to review ration card pact – when asked, the food and civil supplies minister admitted that at present no steps were being taken to introduce biometric system in PDS supplies. (Yahoo)

PM gives Aadhaar awards in Rajasthan (Yahoo)

OPINION: An informed choice (on technology and economic growth) (Hindustan Times)

OPINION: Blundering on land & Aadhaar (Kashmir Times)