Comprehensive biometric census and ID for Nigeria

Nigerians to get ID number (Vanguard)

In a move to curtail insurgency and other criminal challenges confronting the country, the National Population Commission, NPC, has commenced a comprehensive biometric capturing of all Nigerians, with a view to allocating every Nigerian number that would be associated with him or her from birth to death.

It looks like Nigeria aspires to something akin to the National Population Register that India is working on.

India: President Enrolls in Biometric National Population Register

Pratibha Patil Enrolls in National Population Register (Outlook India)

"It gives me great pleasure to enroll for the NPR exercise. I appeal to all the citizens of India to enroll themselves at the earliest, as it is not just a matter of right but their duty as well," she said after her biometric enrollment including finger print and eye scan at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Population-Level ID Management

Biometrics offer a leap-frogging opportunities for countries to learn about their own populations. In the same way that the cell phone revolution propelled African countries into a more interconnected world at a fraction of the cost of a land-line network, biometrics offer opportunities for emerging democracies to develop the ID infrastructure that elections depend upon at a lower cost than older democracies had to bear.

Ghana: Census figures must be published now (The Statesman)

The compilation of a new voter register will surely ensure multiple registration is avoided and will lead to a further enhancement of Ghana’s electoral process.

In 2008, the rig-sayers were helped by the admission on the part of the Electoral Commissioner that the voter register was massively bloated. Ghana, with a population of less than 23 million people, said it had a voter population of some 10 million.

Not only does a bloated register give political parties the opportunity to rig elections, they also give rig-sayers the legitimacy to say to their supporters and sympathisers that they have been cheated and that they should stand up and resist – whether the claim is true or false. This is what characterised the 2008 general elections in Ghana

UID: Home Ministry Climb-down

In today's episode of "All UID, All the Time," India's Home Minister Chidambaram announces that "There were media reports about conflict between the home ministry and the UIDAI, but they are not true," and “There is no clash between Adhaar and the smart card issued by the Home Ministry.”

[You may take a moment to retrieve your monocle.]

It looks like Chidambaram was either told in no uncertain terms to start playing nice, or was tipped off ahead of Wednesday's cabinet meeting that UID was going ahead and he figured out which way the wind was blowing on his own (See: Govt likely to extend UIDAI’s ambit). The Home Ministry is now "examining how best to include the Adhaar number into the [Home Ministry's] smart card, which will make the smart card even more feature rich." This is a good thing.

While it is inherently inefficient to have two government bureaucracies with broadly overlapping mandates, India's experience with monolithic bureaucracies that face no competition hasn't been good, either (See: UID Catch-22).

There are also some synergies between the two efforts. They can learn from each other during the massive multi-year organizational effort. The UID database can be used to audit the NPR database and vice versa. Eventually they may be combined.

It's easy to understand Home Minister Chidambaram's point of view. Unlike UID's Nandan Nilakeni, Chidambaram is a real government minister, with a big job and the power (and budget) that goes with it. It must be horribly inconvenient for a government minister to have to compete with India's most famous technology business titan especially when he gets to start from scratch and you have to steer an organizational culture you didn't create and have few mechanisms to change.

His best arguments for clipping Nilakeni's wings were always legal and procedural: UID wasn't created the right way; Parliament hadn't acted; etc. His tactics were counterproductive when he argued his case from a technical position because his technical criticisms (accuracy, fraud, etc.) consisted entirely of pointing out challenges inherent in any biometric project of this scale. They applied to UID and the NPR equally.

Hopefully this signals the end of the beginning of the creation of a key piece of 21st century Indian infrastructure.

If the two organizations can work together for the common good there will be plenty of credit to go around.

Indonesia: ID, E-ID and Ministerial Competence

E-ID: Ambitious but ambiguous mega project (The Jakarta Post)

A 16-digit NIK serial number is used to identify one person among 237 million Indonesian citizens. It is a digital identification number for every resident that can facilitate services related to immigration, taxation, banking, insurance, population census for elections and ID cards. In other words, NIK is a basic citizen administration database used in several administration documents.

Regarding the main advantage of the program, the ministry argues that the electronic card, which is embedded with an eye biometric system and fingerprint detection will guarantee that every Indonesian citizen will hold only one ID card, because no one can share similar irises or fingerprints. It is true that every fingerprint and iris is unique, but it does not always mean that double citizen cards cannot happen.

Nevertheless, there is always a chance for a person to hold double or triple ID cards because the NIK system in the country remains in a mess.

The previous post deals with acceptable rates of inaccuracy in the determination of an individual's identity in a biometric national ID program. The above article invites questions about how much government inefficiency can be tolerated in the data collection.

India UID Hits Stride, Census Getting Started

India’s biometric ID project Aadhaar gets 1 million new registrations daily (The Next Web)

With one million new registrations coming in every day, that database is growing at an astounding pace. The project was kicked off at the end of September last year and has since swelled to include 54 million registrations in just over a year, with the goal of hitting 200 million by the end of 2012.

The rest of the article talks about the Unique Identification Authority of India's IT and customer service as it rapidly increases its capacity.

Meanwhile...

Shortage of kits, manpower hits state NPR work (The Statesman)

Work for preparation of a National Population Register (NPR), which involves creating a biometric database and generating a Unique Identification Number (UIN) for every citizen, has been hit in the state due to inadequate supply of machine kits and scarcity of operators. While the state requires more than 3,500 machines for covering nearly 8.22 crore of its total population within December, 2012, till date it has got only 143 biometric operating machines which are in a working condition. Another 22 machines are not working at all. The authorities are also facing a shortage of operators to carry out the work. Hence, only 8.6 lakh people have been covered so far.

Note: lakh = 100,000; crore = 10,000,000

Caveats: UID has a head start. The article about UID is national in focus while the article on the NPR is local. It's possible, even likely, that one could cherry pick a location where NPR is thriving while UID isn't.

UPDATE:
Aadhaar Gains Momentum, 20 Million Enrollments in October (Economic Times - Nov. 3, 2011)

It's On: India Census February 9-28, 2012

Information will be fed to create population register (Deccan Herald)

Registrar-General and Census Commissioner C Chandramouli on Wednesday said the biggest-ever census attempted in the history of mankind enumerating the country’s 1.2 billion population will be conducted across 35 states and Union Territories.

India sure has been going big lately. At its size, it pretty much has to.

India UID elicits global attention

This three minute CNN video the accompanying article does a really good job of explaining the status quo that makes UID necessary by talking with real people who struggle to get by in a modern world without a legitimate ID.

Creating ripples across the world (DNA - India)

Sources said interest in knowing more about UIDAI and its implementation has been expressed by a number of foreign diplomats, including those from the United States and other European and Western nations.

“UIDAI is the single largest IT project of its kind to have ever been executed by any country. This fact itself raises innumerable questions, the biggest being how we were handling it,” a senior UIDAI official, said.

Currently, the world’s largest biometric database is with the US-Visit programme, which has data of about 100 million people. US-Visit is short for United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology.

With the census and UID, India is attempting something never before attempted. The stakes couldn't be higher. The risks to (and rewards for) India's national self-confidence and the future of its citizens are huge.

And creating ripples at home (Khaleej Times)

...[T]he government should focus on changing these harsh realities. To begin with, it must streamline delivery systems, weed out ineffective programmes and prioritise self-selection schemes such as rural job guarantee scheme. These initiatives can be supplemented with intelligent use of technology, particularly biometric information-based Unique Identification cards, for better targeting 
the benefits.

UIDAI gets first complaint of misuse of personal data (The Economic Times)

"The contact centre of UIDAI is handling the grievances and complaints of all stakeholders. They have not received any specific complaint related to privacy concerns while collecting individual data. However, a complaint regarding misuse of address proof was received," the authority said in reply to an RTI query.

See also:
Indian Govt. plans to go biometric with census (March 25, 2010 - our first post on the subject)
7 things to know about India's UID (May 11, 2011)
India UID: It's About People (August 31, 2011)

All posts on India

China: E-payment booms (Guardian.co.uk)
Use your fingerprint to buy a bowl of noodles for half off at 10 yuan ($1.60).

Jakarta, Indonesia: 7 of city's 9 million residents expected to get biometric ID cards (The Jakarta Post)

Mauritania: Minorities not too keen on biometric census (AFP)

India Census and UID Update - Population 1.2 Billion

India has just finished counting its population which is now more than 1.2 billion (ABC - Radio Australia)

It puts India on course to surpass China as the world's most populous nation sometime after 2030. But it doesn't stop there. After this massive logistical exercise, the country over the next few months will count the number of people in each layer of its caste hierarchy for the first time in 80 years.

Much more at the link.
Biometric identity management systems are a means to an end. The article provides insights into India's hopes for the UID Priject.

Indian firm to launch 'Bank on Bike' for financial inclusion

SBBJ to launch 'Bank on Bike' for financial inclusion (EconomicTimes.com)

State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur , a subsidiary of State Bank of India (SBI), is planning to launch Bank on Bike initiative to bring unbanked rural population of Rajasthan under the banking net. This initiative is a part of the financial inclusion plan of the central government to cover all villages with 2,000 and above population

One of the hoped-for benefits of India's UID project is the an extension of the benefits provided by modern institutions to poor citizens.

India Begins Census Count

India has begun the mammoth task of conducting a count of its billion plus population (Voice of America)

More than two and a half million census workers branched out throughout the vast nation on Wednesday to document details of all Indians.

The three-week phase of the census is the most challenging as it involves a physical count of the country’s citizens. The mammoth exercise will be completed by the end of the month.

Biometrics: Giving Afghans an identity UPDATE

 Following on this post last month comes this from Wired.com...

Army Reveals Afghan Biometric ID Plan; Millions Scanned, Carded by May

Scanning prisoners’ irises is just Step 1. In Afghanistan, local and NATO forces are amassing biometric dossiers on hundreds of thousands of cops, crooks, soldiers, insurgents and ordinary citizens. And now, with NATO’s backing, the Kabul government is putting together a plan to issue biometrically backed identification cards to 1.65 million Afghans by next May.

Interesting nugget:

There are all kinds of hurdles to the plan, however. At the moment, Afghanistan’s two main biometric databases don’t talk to one another, limiting their effectiveness.

SecurLinx customers don't encounter these problems and we can fix them for customers in need of increased interoperability. Our middleware increases the ROI on existing identity management systems.

Citizen or subject: The politics of personal identity

When IT Meets Politics (ComputerWeekly.com, UK)

The issues of personal identity are central to a global information society in which we are routinely expected to conduct transactions with those whom we have not met before, cannot remember or may never physically meet. The supporting technologies, from smart cards, encryption and biometrics to secure and efficient databases and networks, have been in regular use for decades. The reasons for the current controversy over ID systems have little or nothing to do with technology developments: save in the sense that they may be used as an excuse for promoting a solution which serves political objectives.

The linked article is an excellent survey of the forces at work within the identity management sphere. It does a great job of addressing the questions:

• What do governments want from an ID management system?
• What do citizens want in the bargain?
• How does trust play a role?
• What makes for a sustainable and acceptable ID management framework?

These are important questions and rarely are they addressed with such careful attention to history and context as they are here.

Please read the whole thing.

Biometrics: Giving Afghans an identity

Army.mil

There have been a couple of villages that have been enrolled because the village elder said they wanted to prove that they support the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and are against Taliban, Yelverton said. "It allows non-criminal males to have an easier time finding work, because if they haven't been involved in criminal activity, it helps," said U.S. Army Capt. Michelle Weinbaum, Task Force 435, Task Force Biometrics operations officer, and a native of Cranston, R.I. "It's not only proof of involvement, but also proof of non-involvement."

Can you imagine an existence where you couldn't identify yourself to anyone who didn't know you already?

This article really illuminates the challenges faced by both the Afghan government and the U.S. military. It appears possible that the efforts of the 101st Airborne Division could lead to the development of the kind of information necessary to increase the effectiveness of the Afghan government and allow the citizens of Afghanistan to create and deepen their civil institutions.

"Afghans enrolling Afghans really works. "Not only did they do an awesome job, Afghans lined up to get enrolled by other Afghans."

Afghanistan hasn't had a census since 1979, and that one was never completed.

From the CIA World Factbook for Afghanistan (2010 est.):

Age structure:
0-14 years: 43.6%
15-64 years: 54%
65 years and over: 2.4%

Median age: 18 years

It seems that only about 25% of the Afghan population was even alive for the last (incomplete) census. It's hard to help a population when you don't know much about it. Perhaps these efforts can begin to develop the information necessary to help make Afghanistan a better place for its citizens. After all, it's about people.

India's UID project: The caste factor

In this post we noted that the Indian government had approved the collection of caste information with the census for the first time since 1931.

For those interested in the subject of the history of caste and the Indian census, this article from Frontline [India] offers insight.

THE inclusion of caste in Census 2011 has been a vexed question for the polity. The uncertainty over the issue has now come to an end with the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Caste Census giving its consent for the exercise. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who led the GoM, announced in the Lok Sabha on August 12 that only the modalities remained to be sorted out.

In the past few months, caste-based enumeration has been the subject of opinion columns of newspapers, talk shows on television and discussions on the Internet. A conference on “Caste Census: Towards an Inclusive India”, held on July 23 at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy (CSSEIP) of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, provided another forum to discuss the issue at length.

Identity management is about people.

UPDATE: I forgot to include the link to the Frontline article. It's fixed now, with apologies.

The Indian government has approved the inclusion of information on caste in the ongoing population census.

BBC.co.uk

The controversial decision was taken by a group of ministers, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

Thaindian.com

The enumeration of caste in India has evoked a divided response, even as the pressure of other backward class (OBC) groups forced the ministerial panel’s nod. The last caste census was carried out in India in 1931.

News.WebIndia123.com

Janata Dal-United (JD-U) member Sharad Yadav also joined the protests, urging Speaker Meira Kumar to allow the protesting members to speak over the matter and ask the government to explain its position. 

We've drawn attention to the Indian census before, focusing mainly on the technological challenges India faces in attempting to create a comprehensive multi-modal biometric register of its adult population.

As these three articles indicate, the challenges aren't limited to the technological realm. The social challenges associated with the effort are gargantuan as well.

UID selects Accenture, Satyam, L-1 for biometrics contract

Business-Standard.com

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has selected three consortiums, led by tech firms Accenture, Mahindra Satyam and L-1 Identity Solutions, respectively, to provide technology solutions to capture the fingerprints and iris scans (known as biometrics) of the country’s 1.2 billion people. The consortia include algorithm and system integration providers.

Biological changes may put UID out of bounds for kids

EconomicTimes.com (India)

Children up to 15 years do not have sharp patterns of fingerprints, the metric used to uniquely identify each one of them and more importantly, for authentication. The iris — the coloured portion of the eye — that is to be used to issue a unique identity number, too, does not fully develop before seven years.

“The iris starts achieving 90% stability in size only after six years of age. A normal iris starts assuming stability only by eight years,” said Dr Rakesh Gupta, consultant eye surgeon at Max Balaji Hospital in New Delhi.

Fingerprint patterns assume stability at an even later stage, around 16 years, said Dr V Khanna, a South Delhi-based skin specialist. “Fingerprints are very feeble in children and difficult to capture,” he said.

A few posts here have dealt with the use of biometric identifiers for children.

From ghost workers (yesterday's post) to "fake babies"...

A case in point is the Janani Suraksha Yojana, which hands out incentives to mothers. Earlier this week, a fake babies scam was unearthed in Bihar where 300 women claimed to have delivered up to five babies in a span of 60 days to avail an incentive of Rs 1,000 for each baby.

India, in building a comprehensive biometric identity management system in the world's second-most-populated country, is attempting something that has never been attempted before. It is the identity management moon-shot. It is worth keeping an eye on.

Missing biometrics create unique problems for UID project

TheEconomicTimes (India) [Warning: site tries to open 5 pop-ups!]
This has been getting a lot of attention in the Twitterverse and elsewhere.

Scores of people the Aadhaar project will help the most do not have the sharp, curving lines on their fingers as depicted in its logo. Millions of Indians working in agriculture, construction workers and other manual labourers have worn-out fingers due to a lifetime of hard labour, resulting in what is euphemistically referred to in technical literature as ‘low-quality’ fingerprints. This is precisely the demographic that UID aims to help — those that are outside government records and welfare schemes.

While the UIDAI uses two other metrics — an iris scan and a photograph — in issuing the unique identity number, fingerprinting will be the metric used in authentication. This means a passport applicant with worn-out fingers may present his newly-issued UID number as a conclusive proof of identity, but could find the application rejected. The authentication process using a fingerprint scanner could classify the applicant’s worn-out fingers as a so-called ‘false negative’.

The Indian UID project has captured the public's attention. People are becoming aware of the promises and challenges of large scale biometric identity management deployments. This is a good thing.

On the technical front, "worn out" fingerprints don't present an insurmountable challenge to the Indian project. An ID management system that increases efficiency in the vast majority of transactions while presenting no new obstacles in the rare cases is a valuable system.

The proper way to evaluate a proposed identity management system is to compare the system currently in use to the expected performance of the envisioned system while balancing the costs of the new system against the improvements upon the old way of doing things. Too often, those skeptical about biometric ID management deployments start from the position that anything less than automated perfection is failure*. This attitude can impede the adoption of cost-saving improvements in critical organizational processes.

In adopting a multi-modal approach -- the UIDAI seems to have allowed for the use of iris for backup authentication as well as providing a photograph and an ID number -- it does not appear that India is creating an ID management system that will be unable to serve those with "worn out" fingerprints or those with disabilities that would prevent them from using a fingerprint based system.

*Similar thoughts here.