UIDAI and Government of India
The Good news is Government of India has decided to introduce Unique
Identification Number for each Citizen which is going to be implemented by
Organisation known as Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)
There are some major challenges in this Mega project
i)Right Resources:
First and foremost we should have right resources for the
project.Resources means not only human resources but also other
resources.The Government has taken a good initial step by appointing
Nilekani as the Chairman of the project .Since he comes from IT Industry
more can be expected of him .The authority should be directly under Prime
Minister of India and it should be plagued by bureaucratic approvals and
procedures.Special law should be created for the Organisation so that it has
some special powers to execute this project.
ii)Software:
The Next big Challenge is what is going to be Backbone (Software
of the System).Whether it is going to be Open Source or Closed Source.?
In this post I am going to talk about having an internal site for UIDA which
can be used for Updating/Viewing the details.
The first and foremost question is what is the Software & OS we can use in
Desktop.My default would be either Ubuntu/Redhat with local server (Apache
with MySQL/Php) from which it will be updated to Server Clusters or just
Ubunut/Redhat updating via Internet (should be a secured network with AES256
Encryption) to Server Clusters.
Let us talk about the Second one which seems more feasible..
We are going to have a internal site by which UID can be viewed/updated
by Government Offices.So the easy way to go about this to have the site made
in Php and Database may be MySQL (Even wiki runs on Php and MySQL)
Some may ask why I am Choosing Php and MySQL over .NET and MS SQL.The Reason
is simple .MySQL and Php will be open source and they will be always there
and not the same can be said about any Closed Source.(Microsoft).They are
controlled by Large Corporations and we can’t be sure that they may exist
for next 100 years since during this recession many big Corporations have
bite the dust and filed for Bankruptcy.So only I am preferring
MySQL/Php/Java over Others .