Indian Railways hopes to offer better services to its passengers through the use of the unique identification 'Aadhaar' numbers - the authentication provided by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).
"We are in talks with the railways, which have been pioneers in the use of IT, and we think there are many applications where Aadhaar authentication can be used to deliver better services to the people. We have just held preliminary meetings with the Railway Board," said UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani.
Nilekani said the unique numbers can be used by the Railways for its more than 1.4 million employees in areas of pension payments, authenticating employee family members when they visit a health care facility or for railway receipts when goods are sent.
The Indian Railways run about 11,000 trains every day including freight and passenger vehicles.
Almost one million passengers reserve their berths and seats through the passenger reservation system, while close to 14 million passengers are catered to daily by the unreserved ticketing system.
"For us, the Aadhaar adoption in public service application is a very important goal and we look forward to working with the Railways on that," he added.
Emphasising the need for roping in the right kind of talent for longer duration to evolve sustainable models, he said the focus should be to create a broad set of capabilities in the system so that the right people are available to strategic projects in a continuous manner.
"In the coming decades, technology-enabled projects in governance will become more and more pervasive. This will help us to take the projects to a certain level of sustainability in a very short period of time," said Nilekani.
No personal identity information needed
To get Aadhaar numbers from the UIDAI, citizens will not have to give their personal identity information, according to the authority's Aadhaar Authentication Application Programming Interface.
The Aadhaar Authentication is the process wherein the Aadhaar number, along with other attributes, including biometrics, are submitted online to the Central Identities Data Repository for verification on the basis of the information or data or documents available with it. Aadhaar authentication service only responds with a "yes/no" and no personal identity information is returned as part of the response.
