India consults stakeholders on federated digital identity project

A plan has been proposed by India’s government to introduce a new digital ID overarching citizens’ different existing digital IDs such as PAN, Aadhaar, driver’s license and passport numbers, allowing them to be inter-linked, stored and accessed through a federated ID system.

Consultations for the realization of the project have been launched and will unfold till February 27 under the coordination of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), reports The Indian Express.

The move is intended to give citizens more control over their digital identities and allow them the choice of which to use for each specific transaction, including those with third-parties.

According to the proposed draft, the federated digital ID can be used as a key to a registry which store ID data from the state and central governments and will help solve the problem of repeated verification since the various IDs will be linked to one another.

The unique ID system, authorities say, will also facilitate the completion of digital know your customer (KYC) processes for users and will help government and private bodies make online identification much easier.

The initiative will operate under the Indian Enterprise Architecture (IndEA) 2.0 framework first proposed in 2017 which seeks to make sure that all developments in the domain of technology are in consonance with government organizations’ business perspectives.

As The India Express reports, the IndEA 2.0 also proposes three patterns for digital ID architecture development by all central and state government agencies.

Meanwhile, The Hindu quotes a portion of the Ministry’s draft proposal on the project as saying it is a move to better manage users’ multiple IDs.

“As various government platforms across domains are being digitized, there is a tendency to create more IDs each with its own ID card, ID management, and effort to make it unique. Having a multitude [of] IDs, especially to interact with the government, makes it harder for the common man for whom these are created. Especially given the diversity in education, awareness and capabilities, this also has a potential to further create exclusion scenarios,” a portion of the draft proposal reads.

Article Topics

Aadhaar  |  biometrics  |  data protection  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  government services  |  identity management  |  identity verification  |  India  |  KYC