Schools, banks & other entities to get IDs too

NEW DELHI: Now institutions like schools, banks and even government departments may get a Unique ID number, which the government plans to term as Entity ID (EID). The Unique ID Authority of India has come out with a numbering plan for generating 12- digit ID numbers. It has plans to keep aside some UID numbers for allotment to institutions.

“This is to ensure that if such a need arises in future, we might be prepared,” said Srikanth Nadamuni, technology head at Unique ID Authority of India, who is busy in preparing an algorithm for generating the ID numbers, to be rolled out by February 2011. The algorithm will be classified as a national secret. This is to make sure that a Unique ID number can’t be guessed easily to avoid fraud. The 11-digits itself will make for over 100 billion number combinations.

But a 12th ‘escape’ digit will be added, just to provide for a possibility, if the pool of 100 billion numbers starts filling up rapidly , in an unlikely scenario of a population explosion.

“We plan to make the number not guessable as it is with ID numbers in some other countries,” said Mr Nadamuni, who has joined UIDAI from the private sector. “The aim is to keep the ratio of population to number of possible combinations below 0.05 at all times,” he explained. Just for record, for 1.1 billion Unique IDs (India’s current population), the ratio will be 0.011.

In US, some university researchers have managed to crack the algorithm of generating social security numbers. They can generate a social security number just by possessing the date of birth or location of an individual. In countries like China, date of birth can be guessed from some ID numbers. “We believe that inserting a parameter in an ID number might lead to data privacy issues. So, we plan to make the number not disclose anything about a person,” he added.

A number generated to a citizen will remain unique till eternity. And, if a citizen fails to use his or her Unique ID at any bank, telecom company or any other application form for a period spanning ten years, the government might consider him or her as ‘expired’ . “One simple way to deal with that is to flag UID record as inactive once one confirms the death.

The 'timeout' may however be changed,” say authority officials. This is to ensure that NREGA payments or other benefits cannot be misused in the event of a person’s death.