The Central government is seemingly working on the successor of the Aadhaar Card. According to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s (MeitY) proposed plan that was assessed by The Indian Express, the government is working on a new model of “Federated Digital Identities” to link multiple digital IDs such as driving licence, passport numbers, PAN, and so on- all into one.
This new digital ID will seemingly be present in the form of a unique ID, similar to the Aadhaar card number. The proposed plan suggests the umbrella digital identity will “empower” a citizen by “putting her in control of these identities and providing her with the option of choosing which one to use for what purpose,” the report notes.
The Federal Digital Identity will also seemingly serve as a one-stop destination to store Central and State-related ID data. As expected, this digital ID could be used for KYC or eKYC (know your customer) processes. The report highlights the proposed plan has been moved under the India Enterprise Architecture (IndEA) 2.0 that was first introduced in 2017 to essentially bring government and private entities to ease online identification processes.
Who will work on the Federal Digital Identity
To move forward the proposal, the government has also suggested a revised framework where the most extensive work would be undertaken by the Centre ‘or by ministries which deal with concurrent or state subjects.’ The state governments will look after the ‘state architecture pattern’, and both state and central governments will work on the ‘InDEA Lite architecture pattern’.
Purpose of Federal Digital Identity
The report highlights that the proposed framework aims to develop a new digital architecture that is “interlinked and interoperable.” The ‘Federal Digital Identity’ would hope to ease the process of eKYC with just one unique ID.
However, critics may raise issues with digital security, and an umbrella identity could pose more risks towards exposing critical data. However, the proposed idea is at nascent stages, and the inner workings remain unclear. The proposal will reportedly be available in the public domain soon, and the Ministry might seek comments by February 27.
