Govt eyes Aadhaar-enabled smartphones to ease access to govt services for masses
Science-fiction movie scenarios may soon come to real life, courtesy the government’s new plans to link public welfare schemes to smartphones. A new system in the works could soon make true a scenario where a user shows his smartphone at the pension office, your identification is checked instantly through your identity details on your smartphone and the pension credited directly to the user’s account.
In what the government claims to be a ‘game-changing’ public welfare scheme, the new system is expected to cut down on the time consumed to access government services via Aadhaar card.
A meeting was conducted between Ajay Bhushan Pandey, chief executive officer of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which administers Aadhaar, and senior executives of smartphone-makers including Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft and Micromax, and product software think tank iSPIRT, which discussed ways to make smartphones Aadhaar-enabled.
How will it work?
- UIDAI has come up with this idea where chips of Aadhaar-enabled smartphones will be encrypted with a UIDAI key and the phones will be connected to the Aadhaar server.
- The key is a security feature that will avoid information leakage.
- The server connection will let instant fingerprint and iris authentication.
- Some of the high-end smartphones already have fingerprint and iris recognition technology embedded in their operating system.
- Once implemented, phones will become the identity of a person and allow them more transactions on the phone in a secure manner.
Considering that there are more than 100 crore Aadhaar Card users, and more than 40 crore smartphone users right now, this idea can be achieved easily.
The government is currently trying to provide all welfare schemes such as Jan Dhan Yojana, MNREGA; all public distribution schemes, subsidies such as LPG, health etc and government services such as pension, provident funds etc via Aadhaar Card.
Once all the smartphones are automatically embedded with the Aadhaar card chip, verification for recipients would become easy and fast.
