On 21 March 2023, representatives of the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) and Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) delivered a webinar presentation about Aadhaar, the citizen digital ID program of India.
The head of services for BIS – Mr. Sandeep Kanojia, the BIS lead going forward on this topic, hosted the meeting. The presentation was done by Mr. Sanjeev Yadav, the Director Verification and Authentication for Aadhaar. Mr. Dr. Saurabh Garg, the CEO UIDAI was present as well.
The presentation was recorded. To watch it click here.
Aadhaar is the largest citizen ID system in the world containing the identities of over 1.35 billion Indian citizens and residents. Aadhaar users can interact with an increasing range of Indian government and industry digital services, which is gradually increasing societal, digital and financial inclusion. This presentation addressed the following questions:
- What is Aadhaar and what is it for? What are some of its parameters?
- How is Aadhaar used for government and business purposes, particularly for legal entities involved in contracts, payments, supply chains, and logistics?
- How is Aadhaar used by citizens and residents interacting with government and accessing government services?
- How is Aadhaar used by consumers, typically for retail and online activities?
- What are some of the challenges Aadhaar faces, particularly due to its size and the need to reach every part of Indian society for societal inclusion?
- What is the relevance of Aadhaar to standards of ISO/TC 68 for reasons of mutual interest?
Topics highlighted during the presentation included:
- The need for an identification
- Enrolment landscape and saturation rates
- Challenge of a universal enrolment
- Aadhaar authentication (online)
- Authentication and eKYC entity landscape
- Offline verification
- Aadhaar Act 2016 and Aadhaar regulations
- Challenge of people’s trust and credibility of the ID
- JAM Trinity: enabling social and financial inclusion
Over 30 people attended the live presentation which was impressive and successful.
TC 68/SC 8/WG 7 Natural Person Identifier (NPI) will continue to further engage with BIS and UIDAI to further discuss the NPI - Aadhaar interoperability and shared issues.