Bangalore to be hub for UID scheme: Nilekani
14 Nov 2009
Chairman Unique Identification Authority of India Nandan Nilekani on Friday said that the world's biggest citizen database project would have its technology hub in Bangalore
The operation of the Unique Identification (UID) scheme would be outsourced and the government is going to appoint a consultant to run a request for proposal for a managed service provider who can run data centre operations. ''We have asked for the applications and companies can approach us and they will be selected based on the standards that we have,'' Nilekani said.
Giving firm timelines, Nilekani said over 600 million people, about half the country's 1.2 billion population, will get their UID numbers by the end of 2014. The rollout of the 16-digit UID number will commence in 12 to 18 months. The second half of the work is likely to take more time to complete as coverage will be slow in remote areas where people don't even have a basic identity, he said.
Speaking at BangaloreIT.biz 2009's Vision 2020 Leadership series in Bangalore, Nilekani said the committees constituted for biometrics, data standards and verification will submit their reports in a couple of months.
UIDAI will hire professionals both from government departments and the private sector in order to put together different teams for architecting and execution of the project. The project will rely on biometric and fingerprint information of the country's citizens and will partner with other government agencies including the income tax department and the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY).
He said that in six months they will come out with a manual about how to make systems ready for the UID.
