In the short time that Infosys Technologies’ former CEO and co-founder Nandan Nilekani has been part of the government, he has emerged as UPA’s tech czar. Not only is he spearheading the very ambitious Unique Identity (UID) Card project, Nilekani has been recently appointed the chair of the Technology Advisory Group which has the mandate to fix the framework for large and transformational IT projects of the government.
Nilekani parries the ‘czar’ tag as he talks to TOI about his mission to give each and every Indian a unique number — an identity which should be particularly helpful for the poor in terms of financial inclusion. In his mission to evangelise the project, Nilekani has hit the road with a vengeance, meeting everybody — from chief ministers and senior government officials to community and club members. He took time off from one such meeting to speak to Asha Rai. Excerpts from the interview.
Where exactly are you at this point with your project?
Well, it's been about eight months now. We are on target. The finance minister, in his budget speech of July 2009, had announced that we would start giving out the numbers in 12-18 months. This means essentially between August of 2010 and February of 2011. We had a meeting of the prime minister's council on UID which has now become the cabinet committee on UID. We are on target to get there. We have opened offices in Delhi and Bangalore. While Delhi is the headquarters, Bangalore is the technology centre. We have eight regional offices in cities like Chandigarh, Ranchi, and Hyderabad. Out of the eight, five have staff.
We have appointed Ernst & Young to work on the request for proposal (RFP) to appoint our managed service provider which will run our data centre. In January, we launched the RFP for our technology partners. That should be decided in the next few weeks. We are doing a proof-of-concept in three states where we are testing things like biometric enrolment, capturing iris, capturing finger prints, etc...stuff like how much time does it take, what's the quality of the finger prints, the documents required, etc. Basically, we are testing out different aspects.
What's the buy-in for this initiative?
We have been on a massive evangelization drive. I have visited all the states, met most of the chief ministers, told them what's in it for them and what's positive for them. The buy-in is huge. The very fact that I went to meet them, that itself makes them feel good about it. Then I met all the central government bodies, all regulators like sebi, Irda, Trai, etc. So basically everybody's been covered. Now everybody knows what's coming down the road. This year is the year of execution. Before the end of this year, we will be issuing numbers.
The other important thing is that the Census has started. As part of it, they are compiling the National population register. We have an agreement with them that they will collect the biometrics according to UIDAI standards. They will also be a very important registrar for us. We have all these registrars and through many of them we will start issuing cards. We have signed an MOU with Madhya Pradesh and in the next three months will sign MOUs with all the other states.
Nilekani parries the ‘czar’ tag as he talks to TOI about his mission to give each and every Indian a unique number — an identity which should be particularly helpful for the poor in terms of financial inclusion. In his mission to evangelise the project, Nilekani has hit the road with a vengeance, meeting everybody — from chief ministers and senior government officials to community and club members. He took time off from one such meeting to speak to Asha Rai. Excerpts from the interview.
Where exactly are you at this point with your project?
Well, it's been about eight months now. We are on target. The finance minister, in his budget speech of July 2009, had announced that we would start giving out the numbers in 12-18 months. This means essentially between August of 2010 and February of 2011. We had a meeting of the prime minister's council on UID which has now become the cabinet committee on UID. We are on target to get there. We have opened offices in Delhi and Bangalore. While Delhi is the headquarters, Bangalore is the technology centre. We have eight regional offices in cities like Chandigarh, Ranchi, and Hyderabad. Out of the eight, five have staff.
We have appointed Ernst & Young to work on the request for proposal (RFP) to appoint our managed service provider which will run our data centre. In January, we launched the RFP for our technology partners. That should be decided in the next few weeks. We are doing a proof-of-concept in three states where we are testing things like biometric enrolment, capturing iris, capturing finger prints, etc...stuff like how much time does it take, what's the quality of the finger prints, the documents required, etc. Basically, we are testing out different aspects.
What's the buy-in for this initiative?
We have been on a massive evangelization drive. I have visited all the states, met most of the chief ministers, told them what's in it for them and what's positive for them. The buy-in is huge. The very fact that I went to meet them, that itself makes them feel good about it. Then I met all the central government bodies, all regulators like sebi, Irda, Trai, etc. So basically everybody's been covered. Now everybody knows what's coming down the road. This year is the year of execution. Before the end of this year, we will be issuing numbers.
The other important thing is that the Census has started. As part of it, they are compiling the National population register. We have an agreement with them that they will collect the biometrics according to UIDAI standards. They will also be a very important registrar for us. We have all these registrars and through many of them we will start issuing cards. We have signed an MOU with Madhya Pradesh and in the next three months will sign MOUs with all the other states.
