Aadhaar, the Indian government's Unique Identification project, will enable developers to integrate it in applications, and develop software surrounding it. It is working with several partners at different levels. The use of open standards enables interoperability and anonymized performance metrics for systems will be made available to the public for transparency. At the NASSCOM Aadhaar Developer Track conference, the UIDAI oultlined the role of developers in the Aadhaar system, but the major announcement was left for UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani: API calls for third party authentication applications will be free of charge, for the next couple of years. The move will certainly act as a catalyst in the devlopment of an applications eco-system surrounding the UID. Multiple Vendors Multiple vendors have been deployed by the authority at various stages and to take care of different functions. The Software at the enrollment stage has been developed by MindTree, while Biometrics identification is being handled Morpho, Accenture and L1 Identity solutions; logistics will be taken care of by IndiaPost, while Sify will be doing testing for enrolling agencies empanelled by the UIDAI; support has been outsourced to Intellinet. There is no vendor lockin and multiple vendors are deployed even at the ABIS (Automated Biometric Identification System) level. This was a deliberate decision keeping in mind the scale of deployment, to de-risk the exercise and promoting competition between vendors to improve accuracy and throughput. The Developer ecosystem surrounding Aadhaar Since the UIDAI implements an open-system, plug and play approach, developers can enroll for developing software…
