Three consortia to ensure UID numbers arent duplicated…….Surabhi Agarwal & Jacob P. Koshy
The nodal agency for Indias unique identity numbers project has selected three consortia to set up and run systems that will ensure the biometrics-based IDs are not duplicated.
The consortia are led by Accenture Ltd and MindTree Ltd; Mahindra Satyam and Sagem Morpho Security Pvt. Ltd; and Hewlett-Packard Co., L-1 Identity Solutions Inc. and 4G Identity Solutions Pvt. Ltd, said an official from one of these firms, who did not want himself or his company to be identified.
An email was sent to the winning bidders by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) last week, he added. A formal contract will only be signed later this week.
Another official from an information technology (IT) firm that bid for the contract but did not qualify earlier identified the winners. Instead of choosing one vendor, the authority has chosen three, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Rajesh Mashruwala, coordinator of biometrics at UIDAI, said the agency had selected three vendors. The contracts will be announced in a few days, he said, without elaborating.
Spokespersons for MindTree, Mahindra Satyam and Hewlett-Packard refused to comment. Accenture did not reply to questions sent by Mint.
The project, known as Aadhaar, aims to provide unique IDs based on biometric data such as fingerprints and eye scans to all residents of India. The first set of IDs are expected to be rolled out next month.
The selected consortia will develop and maintain systems that will cross-check every new application by sifting through the biometrics database, preventing accidental or fraudulent duplication and ensuring that each number is unique.
While Accenture, MindTree, Mahindra Satyam and Hewlett-Packard are information technology (IT) firms, L-1 Identity, Sagem Morpho and 4G Identity Solutions provide biometric solutions. The contract is expected to be worth at least Rs300 crore, making it Aadhaars second biggest contract after the one for the managed service provider, which is expected to be worth Rs1,000 crore.
Biometrics is not a precise mathematical science and can be error-prone, said R.S. Sharma, director general of UIDAI. So we are mitigating the risk by appointing multiple vendors for the job.
Sivarama Krishnan, executive director of the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers, said the systems to be developed by the selected companies will form the backbone of the Aadhaar project. UIDAI has factored in the risk as well as the practical aspects by following the multi-vendor strategy as once a substantial database of UID holders is in place, the number of transactions to be done for every verification will become too huge for one single vendor, he said.
The number of times cross-checking is required will go up further once UIDAI starts offering verification for banks and other services, as planned.
Vendors will be paid at Rs2.75 for every verification request. All vendors will now be paid at the rate which was bid by the lowest bidder, said the first company official quoted above. The consortium of Accenture and MindTree emerged as the lowest bidder, he added.
Initially, the systems developed by the consortia will be used to de-duplicate the database of 200 million biometric samples that have been collected by UIDAI through various pilot projects across India as proof of concept.
Mashruwala listed out several benchmarks for the systems. Their false positive error rate, when a system incorrectly rules that a person has enrolled although he hasnt, should be less than 0.1%. The false negative error rate, or not showing a person who has enrolled in the records, should be less than 1%.
False acceptance rates, or allowing imposters to successfully fake identities, have to be below 0.01%, and false rejection rates, or marking genuine applicants as imposters, ought to be less than 2%.
UIDAI has so far awarded two major IT projects. While an application development contract was won by MindTree, business process outsourcing firm Intelenet Global Services Pvt. Ltd has been awarded the contract to operate the Aadhaar call centre.