India’s Aadhaar hackathon pulls in 5,000 innovators

The Aadhaar Hackathon 2021 has attracted more than 5,000 innovators across over 3,000 team registrations, reports the India Education Diary, to develop solutions on the topics of ‘Enrolment and Update’ and ‘Identity and Authentication.’

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is hoping to find practical solutions to proving identity without sharing a person’s Aadhaar number or any demographic information as well as new uses for the biometric face authentication API.

The hackathon included online mentoring sessions with UIDAI officials, and hundreds of queries were sent to four web channels opened for API access and problem statements, according to the report.

Privacy rights campaigners have criticized the event, seeing the biometric ID system as already exclusionary with more exclusionary operations being added to the apparatus.

Aadhaar Twitter accounts have described those taking part as soldiers ready to begin a ‘New India’. Winners will receive cash prizes and some may land jobs at the UIDAI.

The final projects of the four-day event have been submitted to the jury for final decisions.

Article Topics

Aadhaar  |  authentication  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  identity verification  |  India  |  national ID  |  research and development  |  UIDAI