The card party begins
07 May 2010
A ‘card carrying member’ has historically been associated with members of some political parties with manifestos not necessarily belonging to the democratic main stream. Well, in India this line of thinking will shortly undergo a massive change in mindset. Every Indian citizen, man, woman and child would very soon have a sixteen digit randomly generated Unique Identification Number (UID) and a card or cards with this UID embedded in what will be the world’s largest ID exercise to date.
The very ambitious UID project, named "Aadhar", will establish an identity database of a minimum of 1.2 billion based on biometric parameters. It may be highlighted that currently the largest biometric database is 120 million in the US, so India will implement a program with a multiple of ten. Given the extraordinary complexity of this whole exercise, the very large numbers (ID’s and financial requirements), myriad technological approaches, highly robust front end and back end hardware configurations and some of the most cutting edge and fool proof software, it is no wonder that the Indian Prime Minister has selected one of India’s topmost I.T. ‘Gurus’, Nandan Nilekani – co founder of the Global I.T. major, Infosys, to head the program with the rank of a Cabinet Minister in the Government of India.
The "Aadhar" program, in addition to cutting out the multiplicity of identity exercises for applications such as in passports, driving licences, income tax cards, Director’s cards etc., will increase people’s access to education, food subsidies, banking facilities ,credit cards, microfinance, as well as streamline payments and subsidies under social welfare schemes to the weakest sections of society. The first set of ID’s will be issued between August 2010 and February 2011, and some 600 million ID’s will be issued in the next four years. Most interestingly, the technology platform proposed will enable online and mobile phone based verification and transaction.
The actual generation and recording of identities will be based on biometric attitudes (face, all fingerprints, iris scans and cross references to other documents) to ensure total uniqueness. A huge number of biometric devices such as cameras, scanners, specialised iris cameras, all robust enough to be used in the varied climatic conditions of India, will be employed. The I.T. requirements will include a robust data centre, back end servers capable of handling biometric checks, centralised applications, de- duplication and authentication software and massive storage capabilities, business continuity planning, disaster recovery sites. Added to this will be device software with Application Program Interfaces allowing easy integration with demographic software, security software, firewalls, fraud detection software, intrusion detection systems, encryption software and hacker tracking software. No wonder the 10 shortlisted I.T. companies for the project are rubbing their hands in expectation of a share of this $ 5 billion opportunity.
It is not just the I.T. companies that will have a windfall. The ‘card’ technology and manufacturing companies are equally looking forward to this path breaking project. If anything, there will be substantially more number of cards issued than the actual ID’s generated as each individual application such as driving licences, tax cards etc. would now need to be redone incorporating the UID embedded into the new cards with the cards themselves using the latest state of the art technologies.
Almost inevitably the UID based cards would use the latest in smart card technology, providing customer convenience (single card for multiple applications) benefits of quick transactions, inbuilt security, portability etc., and can be used for identification, validation and data storage. Then there is the question of whether the cards should be ‘contactless’ or ‘contact’ based. According to a senior manager of Infineon, one of the companies in reckoning, contactless smart cards are much more durable in harsh outdoor conditions and have a much longer life with better reliability. Further, according to Infineon, contact based cards are less resistant and easily susceptible to various climatic factors such as dust, humidity, oil, wear and tear and are not sturdy enough. Clearly Infineon believes that their contactless cards are better suited to the Indian environment.
This view is shared by NXP Semiconductors, another company in the reckoning. NXP has been a pioneer in the field of contactless technology and applications in the field of transportation,, e-governance, and banking and their cards conform to the Global Standard ISO/IEC 14443. According to a statement issued by NXP Semiconductors, they provide chips for token and e-passport systems with a share over 80% of all global e-passport chip sets. Interestingly, NXP was the sole supplier of all 2.3 million chips, with the highest level of security and reliability conforming to Common Criteria EAL5+, for the initial pilot projects carried out in India.
Several other smart card technology options would be up for consideration. These would include minimised chip size for cost effectiveness, larger memory sizes for multimedia applications, requirements for Near Field Communications to enable mobile phone based applications, High Density SIM, and machine to machine interface operating through a secure SIM controller., to name a few. Needless to say the coming months promise a lot of excitement and buzz in the whole ‘card’ eco structure in India.
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