The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) held on June 30 at New Delhi, its third conference of ecosystem partners of the project, for the northern region. The event was attended by UIDAI’s state and central registrars, enrolment agencies which capture resident’s demographic and biometric data as well as officials from the authority.
The conference opened by UIDAI Director General and Mission Director, Sh. Ram Sevak Sharma who emphasised the importance of data quality in ensuring uniqueness of IDs in his opening address. “Quality by design, is something we must aspire to”, said Mr. Sharma. “All efforts must be made to contribute towards ensuring a near zero error situation”. He also added that, resident comfort during the enrolment process is important to the Authority. He urged all partners to ensure basic conveniences for residents, at the enrolment centres.
The conference aimed at discussing the progress of the Aadhaar project in the Northern region which is managed by three regional offices in Delhi, Lucknow and Chandigarh that oversee operations covering over 44 crore residents. A discussion was held with the various ecosystem partners on the operational issues in the implementation of the Aadhaar project.
As the UIDAI has recently issued its 10 millionth Aadhaar, Deputy Director General UIDAI, Mrs. Sujata Chaturvedi spoke about how till now the thrust to the program had come from the southern states and it was early days yet for the programme in the northern states. UIDAI has been on track in ramping-up its operations since it issued the first Aadhaar number in September 2010 in the Nandurbar district of Maharashtra. From 4,000 enrolments per day it has scaled up to over 4 lakh enrolments per day and this figure will likely increase to 10 lakh per day by October 2011.
Deputy Director General for the Lucknow region, Dr. AB Pandey informed the gathering that India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh will undertake Aadhaar enrolments as a stand alone process and not through any of its departments as has been the case in many other states. He also emphasised the need for close cooperation between the Authority and its Registrars and the enrolment agencies engaged by them to ensure the smooth implementation of this mammoth project which aims to enrol every resident of the country and give them a 12 digit unique ID- Aadhaar.
The conference gave an opportunity to all partners to share their experiences from the field and discuss solutions and best practices to address shared concerns. The UIDAI also talked about the technology tools and solutions developed by its teams in response to challenges faced on the ground. A new version of the enrolment client, which has been modified taking into account feedback from registrars and enrolment agencies, was also presented at the conference.
In his closing remarks, UIDAI Chairman, Sh. Nandan Nilekani was optimistic that all the learning of the project thus far will provide the impetus for forging ahead with enrolments in the future, especially in the northern region. He encouraged all partners to absorb the best practices discussed today and apply them to address the challenges of scale and speed to achieve the 10 million Aadhaars per day target whilst maintaining the stringent quality standards of the project. He ended by saying that Aadhaar is an empowering tool that has innumerable applications and will make a difference in the daily lives of millions of people, once authentication for delivery of a number of services rolls out in the coming months.
