UIDAI to work with World Bank, UN to globalise Aadhaar model

Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) plans to work with the World Bank and United Nations to develop international identity standards based on the Aadhaar model. 

"This (Universal Global Identity System) is something we are very actively working upon. We have got queries from many countries, both in our neighbourhood -- Asia and across the world. Some countries have already adopted the kind of architecture we have used, and others are keen to do that," said Saurabh Garg, Chief Executive Officer, UIDAI.

He was addressing the Digital Money Conference, organised by the Payments Council of India, and said that global countries have evinced interest in replicating Aadhaar architecture. 

He claimed that Aadhaar now covers about 99.5% of the adult Indian population and has universalised access to financial services. 

On the issue of security threat, Garg said that "Aadhaar is an architecture with built-in privacy by design. We only allow the use of Aadhaar by way of consent, and secondly, in terms of information security, that takes prime importance for us."

He added that Aadhaar data centres keep information isolated and can only be assessed through secure and friendly mechanisms. 

UIDAI claims to have 24X7 security operation centres, which receives information from agencies and intelligence on what is happening. 

"Security of the data system is of utmost importance to us," Garg said.
 
With the central theme as 'Innovation to Scale', the event will discuss how innovation enables payments stakeholders to organically scale up the digital payments while ensuring that existing operations perform consistently and sustainably.