Aadhaar apps development on the cards

Nasscom Product Council on Tuesday announced the launch of the Aadhaar Diffusion Project, an effort in collaboration with UIDAI to accelerate the development of applications and services that leverage the Aadhaar identity infrastructure.

In simple terms, a developer can now use Aadhaar application programming interface (API) to develop apps.

Talking at the Nasscom Product Conclave here, UID Chairman Nandan Nilekani said that the US government had launched global positioning system (GPS) in the 90s and later in the 2000s it was made available for commercial purposes.

“Now it has grown big and UIDAI is trying to replicate this model to provide a platform for building apps.”

The goal, Nilekani said, is to achieve widespread diffusion of Aadhaar platform knowledge across new entrepreneurial ventures and existing software companies to assist and nurture Aadhaar capabilities. According to him, 55 crore Aadhaar numbers have been created, at a pace of 3 crore per month and thus he believes that the target of 60 crore Aadhaar numbers by 2014 is very much achievable.

As part of the initiative, Nasscom plans to hold a number of activities to evangelise software developers; annual developer conference, hackathons, app contests and bootcamps. The Aadhaar Diffusion Project will also run awards in varied categories as well as have certification programmes.

“With over 470 million Aadhaar numbers being issued, this digital identity infrastructure provides a unique identity number to a resident of India which can be verified anywhere.”

Aadhaar online authentication framework that has been established provides verification and authentication of the Aadhaar number along with other attributes (including biometrics) of the residents and serves as ‘Proof of Identity’.

UIDAI had launched fingerprint-based online authentication on February 7, 2012. Subsequently, various schemes like MNREGA payments, National Social Assistance Program Scholarships, PDS, LPG cylinders distribution were integrated with Aadhaar online line Authentication for delivery of service. 

Further, UIDAI launched Iris based online Authentication, One Time Pin (OTP) Authentication and eKYC (Electronic- Know Your Customer) services on May 24  2013.