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Government moots plan to link digital ids .

What is the News?

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has proposed a new model of “Federated Digital Identities” under which a citizen’s multiple digital IDs — from PAN and Aadhaar to driving licence and passport numbers — can be interlinked, stored, and accessed via one unique ID

About Federated Digital Identities?

It is one unique ID under which a citizen’s multiple digital IDs — from PAN, Aadhaar to driving licence and passport numbers — can be interlinked, stored and accessed for digital transactions such as authentication and eKYC services.
Aim of the unique id is to optimize the number of digital identities that a citizen needs to have.
This proposal is part of the Electronics and IT Ministry’s India Enterprise Architecture 2.0 (IndEA 2.0).

What is the reason behind the proposal?

Currently, having multiple IDs makes it harder for a common man for whom these IDs are created.
Hence, a unique digital identity is being proposed to enable the citizen to answer the first question asked in any interaction with a public or private organization, ‘who I am’.

Importance of Federated Digital Identities

It will empower the citizen by putting him/her in control of these identities and providing him/her the option of choosing which one to use for what purpose.
It will also do away with the need for repeated verification. For example, when a beneficiary is registered for the PDS scheme, that record will be linked to Aadhaar by the PDS system storing the Aadhaar number (or a tokenized version of it).

What is India Enterprise Architecture(IndEA)?

India Enterprise Architecture (IndEA) was designed in 2017 with a view to enable alignment of the IT developments with the business vision of government organizations.
It provides a set of architecture reference models aimed at a holistic and integrated approach to e-Governance.
InDEA 2.0 is a framework that enables Governments and private sector enterprises to design IT architectures that can span beyond their organizational boundaries and enable the delivery of holistic and integrated services to the customers.
In the 2.0 version, InDEA proposes a framework that enables public as well as private sector companies to build and design IT architecture “that can span beyond their organisational boundaries” to deliver “holistic and integrated services to the customers”.
Apart from a “federated digital identity”, the new framework has also proposed three major architectural patterns for different government agencies.
The domain architecture pattern would be most suited to be adopted by Central ministries, or by ministries which deal with concurrent or state subjects, or have substantial funding and involvement of the Central government.
The state architecture pattern would be adopted by the state governments, while a third InDEA Lite architecture pattern has been recommended for adoption by smaller departments of the Central and state governments.
The new draft framework also suggests that information technology projects which are built under the new architecture must be developed in such a way that they are interlinked and interoperable. These projects must follow the government’s open application programming interface policy, wherein the source code of the project is available for everyone to tweak and improve upon, the framework proposed.
The InDEA 2.0 report recommends a highly selective approach to the design and development of the building blocks.
Only the core building blocks are proposed to be designed, developed, and managed centrally by the central or state governments. “From a governance perspective, the government plays an enabling role in respect of the remaining building blocks.