Oracle and National ID cards

A report in Business World on Sep 26, 2005 claims "Oracle India to issue national identity cards" as part of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). It was also reported in a popular mailing list dedicated for e-Governance in India - India-eGov. The report further states that Oracle India will be assisted by Home ministry in this under the Multipurpose National Identity Cards (MNIC) project. Nothing could sound more ridiculous than this, if this report is indeed true.

We should clearly demarcate the boundary between the roles of government departments and private companies so that each party operates within their area. I would understand, if Oracle assists the Union Home ministry in the project by providing the database to store the details of the citizens. But, here the report swaps the roles of the home ministry and Oracle. If a private MNC is to issue national id cards, then I fail to see the reason, why we should have the home ministry. The consequences of a MNC having access to the complete (or even part of) national database containing the vital details of citizens are serious and unforeseeable.

This author tried to gather more information on this and browsed thro' Oracle India site, e-Gov Centre of Excellence jointly initiated by Oracle & HP and Google news, but without any success.

Curiously enough a simple Google search on "Oracle national ID cards" threw hundreds of thousands of results. Almost all the results show that Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison has been advocating for national id cards based on digital technology and fingerprints, in US and UK at least since 2001 and even offered the software to make it possible - free of charge. This offer was rejected even by the greatest anti-terror campaigners in the world - George Bush and Tony Blair - on concerns of privacy and citizens' freedom. Writing in The Register Andrew Orlowski points out that, attempts by Oracle chief is to "create new demand and new markets for his wares." He further says explains, "...there would be downstream benefits for Oracle of course, in the form of consulting and future applications."

So, does it mean that Oracle - after having failed in US and UK - is now trying to push the idea of national ID cards in India, in an effort to sustain its market share? Will this not make the Indian govt. to be in the mercy of Oracle forever?

It should however be noted that the present proposal is silent on the use of biometrics in the national id cards. But, given the track record of projects being executed in India, this could well be a closely guarded secret, since the citizens right-to-information is still in the paper, despite the law being passed recently. The Indian public has every right to know the necessity of the present project and the need to award the project Oracle, if it has been do so already. We can not just do anything and everything for the sake of buzz words like e-governance, enabling citizens etc. and we need to be extremely cautious in deciding e-governance projects.

Tailpiece: I only hope that, the reporter misreported the news, which originally could be something like "Oracle to help government in issuing national id cards".

Biometrics - For Schools?

Bangalore schools go high-tech with biometrics reports NewKerala.com. One of the classic case of ill-concieved projects in the name of using high-end technology.

In this specific project Karnataka govt. plans to track the student (and teachers as well) attendance in primary school and use the data so collected for planning other schemes of providing text books, mid-day meals etc. Sounds OK from the outset, if you don't spare a moment to think.

The data of student attendance is already being collected in the registers traditionally in every school and this with minimum effort can be collated from different schools to arrive at the data the govt. wants. Now, what is the point of using the cutting-edge biometrics for this simple purpose? That too, each day morning the kids should be made to register their finger prints, standing in a queue. Assuming one fingerprint sensor will be provided for each school, all students should wait for their turn to register their attendance wasting anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour depending on the school strength. And the poor kids has to stand in the queue in the early morning that too daily even without understanding anything, except that it would be fun for them to play with.

The report claims that the tamper-proof device will provide authorities accurate figures and data, which will be basis for government programme and allows for improvement of administration. I don't know how on earth did the department of public instructions arrived at a notion that traditional attendance keeping methods are inaccurate. And, 'improvement of administration' - vague words from which one never understands anything - it will be better it somebody explains, what will be improved and how.

The point is that the use of biometrics is totally unnecessary and an overkill to be used in schools (that too at primary level) to track the attendance, the data for which is anyway available traditionally. All this being done in the name of e-Governance.

Instead of this, why doesn't the Karnataka govt. use the same technology in the offices of various departments, including the 'department of public instructions'? This way they can track the number of hours the employees are present (not work) in the offices and even the system can be automated such that the salaries will be cut directly based on their attendance. But, I am sure, this will invoke loud protests from the goverment employees probably in the name of privacy intrusion and the authorities will be forced to pull back.

This is just one of the great schemes that uses the technology and surely there will be more such absurd schemes.

But, in the meantime, I have a better idea to track the student attendance.. The government can use RFID coupled with WANs and satellites for this purpose. RFID tags can be tied to the school bags (or the govt. can even decide to put it under the skin) of the kids, which can 'accurately' track them to their classrooms over a Wide Area Network (WAN). The data from different WANs can be collated in a central server, thro' satellite links. The data so collected, I promise will be 'most accurate' and students need not register their fingerprints.

Any takers?