UIDAI launches Public Data Portal for Aadhaar

Zeenews Bureau

New Delhi: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Thursday launched its Public Data Portal (data.uidai.gov.in) for the Aadhaar project in line with the National Data Sharing & Accessibility Policy (NSDAP) 2012. The portal will enable the public to access several anonymised datasets generated in the UIDAI ecosystem. The public data portal is in consonance with the larger vision of the Government of India to make data available through data.gov.in. The UIDAI has also been sharing information about the latest developments of the project in the public domain through its website, www.uidai.gov.in. Apart from adhering to the requirements of the Right to Information Act of providing information suo moto to the public at regular intervals through the Internet, the UIDAI proactively puts out quarterly statements of its expenditure, various technical documents related to biometrics, proof of concept studies and working papers in the public domain. “The public data portal is a major step in enabling transparency for improving UIDAI’s operations. Using data to enhance decision making capabilities and informed decision making is at the core of the rationale for the public portal,” said UIDAI chairman Shri Nandan Nilekani. The Government of India notified the National Data Sharing & Accessibility Policy (NSDAP) 2012 on March 17, 2012. The NDSAP policy is designed to promote data sharing and enable access to central government-owned data for national planning and development. UIDAI Director General Ram Sewak Sharma said: “The public data portal will enable big data analysis using crowd sourcing model for the benefit of the society at large.” UIDAI is currently releasing five data sets pertaining to Aadhaar Enrolment and another five data sets pertaining to Aadhaar Authentication. These datasets provide insights on enrolment and authentication request processed by UIDAI distributed by geography, by ecosystem partner and by certain demographic characteristics. Data sets are available in human and machine-readable formats. Programmatic access to the data sets is also provided for the convenience of researchers. The datasets only provide compiled anonymised information. Due care has been taken to maintain privacy of personal information of individuals.