Unique ID Authority of India, Design and Cloud Connection

Editor's Notes

• #4: In India, an inability to prove identity is one of the biggest barriers preventing the poor fromaccessing benefits and subsidies. Public as well as private sector agencies across the countrytypically require proof of identity before providing individuals with services. But till date,there remains no nationally accepted, verified identity number that both residents andagencies can use with ease and confidence.There are clearly, immense benefits from a mechanism that uniquely identifies a person, andensures instant identity verification. The need to prove identity only once will bring downtransaction costs for the poor. A clear identity number would also transform the deliveryof social welfare programs by making them more inclusive of communities now cut off fromsuch benefits due to their lack of identification. It would enable the government to shift fromindirect to direct benefits, and help verify whether the intended beneficiaries actually receivefunds/subsidies.A single, universal identity number will also be transformational in eliminating fraud andduplicate identities, since individuals will no longer be able to represent themselvesdifferently to different agencies. This will result in significant savings to the stateexchequer.As an example, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas can save over Rs.1200crores a year in subsidies now reportedly lost on LPG cylinders registered under duplicate orghost identities.
• #5: The Unique Identification Authority of India The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was constituted as an attached office under the Planning Commission, to develop and implement the necessary legal, technical and institutional infrastructure to issue unique identity to residents of India.  On June 25th 2009, the Cabinet approved the creation of the position of the Chairperson of the UIDAI, and appointed Mr. NandanNilekani as the first Chairperson with the rank of the Cabinet Minister. On August 3rd 2009, the Prime Minister constituted a Council under his chairmanship to advise the UIDAI and ensure coordination between the Ministries, Departments, stakeholders and partners. The Council will advise the UIDAI on the program, methodology and implementation to ensure this coordination. The Council will also identify specific milestones for the early completion of the project.
• #6: At present the indications are that the following 12 parameters would be associated with the UID data.1. Name2.UID Number of the holder3.Photograph4.Right hand fore finger print5.Name of the Father6. Name of the Mother7. UID of the Father8. UID of Mother9. Date of Birth10. Sex11.Place of Birth12. Address• What is the process that will be followed to issue a UID number?A resident will have to go to an enrolling agency, fill up an application form and provide the supporting documentation including photo and finger print.The enrolling agency will collect this information and send the data, either singly or in batches, to the registrar who will pass this on to the UID database.The system will engage in a de-duplication exercise.If the individual is not already in the database, a UID number will be issued and sent to the person at their residence. The UID number will also be sent to the Registrar for use in their service database.If the individual is already in the database the registration will be rejected and the person will be informed of the same.The registrar will scan the supporting documentation and send it to the UIDAI and keep the physical copies with themselves.• What is the verification process that will be followed by the enrolling agency before processing the documents for a UID number?A Know Your Resident Committee is being formed to establish what would be acceptable forms of supporting documentation. The recommendations should be made within 6 months of being set up and these standards would be used for verification.
• #7: Tembhli with a population of 1,098 will become the first 'Aadhaar' village in the country
• #17: Telephone numbersInternet IP AddressesBar Codes ( UnivProdCode + EuroArtNum GlobTradeItemNum )The two main reasons have been unanticipated growth (and types) of objects to which UIDs are assigned and introduction of structure within the UID format that wastes large parts of the available space of UID values. The design of Internet addresses as proposed in Version 4 of Inter-net Protocols illustrates both of these issues. Initial design provided for 4 bytes to designate a unique address for a computer, called IP address. There was also an explicit hierarchical structure to the IP address. The design was undertaken in the days where mainframes and mini-computers dominated. No one anticipated that one day people would want to provide IP numbers to devices such as mobile phones and even smart appliances; nor did one anticipate that computers would become so small and so cheap that each person would have several computers available, each requiring an Internet Address. Initially, the structure was introduced to make it easy to perform address recognition easier. This meant that typically a large block of IP addresses had to be assigned to any collection of computers at a location not reflecting the actual number of actual computers to be used at that particular location (routing region). Logevity: Y2K problemThe US Social Security Number, for example, has enough of a pattern that an expert can guess a person’s number from their birth-date and from the location at which it was issued.2It is also possible to guess the date and location at which the card was issued from the Social Security Number. The UID is a random number that makes guesswork virtually impossible. 3. The UID approach is designed on an on-line system – data is stored centrally and authentication is done online. This is a forward-leaning approach that makes it possible to avoid the problems associated with many ID card schemes.
• #18: How long should the number be?In short, the string has to be as short as possible but that meets density requirement. It is important to keep the UID simple and small to help residents to remember their number. We suggest the use of 12 digits (11 + 1 check sum) since 11 digits gives us a 100billion number space which in turn can provide a low density of used numbers! About 0.05 density which makes it hard to guess a valid UID number.Only Number no Letters, Why? Not viable option for us given the multi-lingual society that also has high levels of functional illiteracy. 0- numbers (a1 = 0) could be used as an “escape” or version number for future extensions to the length of the number. For example, in future if we need 16 digit numbers, then we could say that 0 means that the number is 16-digits. As of now we can simply declare all 0- numbers as TBD (to be decided). 1- numbers(a1 = 1) could be reserved for entities rather than individuals. Alternatively, 11- could be reserved for entities (or 111-) to match the size of the reserved space to the number of entities expected. We could use 2-9 numbers (a1 =2,3…9) right away to assign UIDs. That is 80 billion numbers -- plenty of space. Number Generation: The numbers are generated in a random, non-repeating sequence. There are several approaches to doing this in the computer science literature. The algorithm and any “seed” chosen to generate IDs should not be made public and should be considered a national secret.
• #19: IBM CheckThe "IBM check", which is used by MasterCard, VISA, and most other credit card companies (including the new Hudson's Bay Company cards, but not the older ones), is an even/odd weighted code. The digits in the even positions (numbering from the right) are multiplied by 2, then reduced to a single digit (if > 9) by "casting out nines" (subtracting 9, which is equivalent to adding the digits). All digits are then summed and a check digit added to make the result evenly divisible by 10.For example, given the number6 1 8 2 0 9 2 3 1 5 5 3 the leading 6 is doubled, giving 12, which is then reduced to 3 by adding the digits of 12 together; similarly, the 8 becomes 16 and then 7; the 0 is impervious to doubling; the 2 becomes 4; the 1 becomes 2; and the 5 in the second-last position becomes 10 and thus 1. Thus the check equation is6#2 + 1 + 8#2 + 2 + 0#2 + 9 + 2#2 + 3 + 1#2 + 5 + 5#2 + 3 mod 10 = 0 where '#' represents multiplication with casting out nines, giving3 + 1 + 7 + 2 + 0 + 9 + 4+ 3 + 2 + 5 + 1 + 3 mod 10 = 40 mod 10 = 0 This scheme catches all single errors and most adjacent transpositions, but not jump transpositions (such as 553 becoming 355) or 09 becoming 90.