In the Works: IT Ministry's New ID To Rule Them All

This 'Federated Digital Identity' would serve as a key to a registry where all different identities could be stored.

Image used for representational purposes.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

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 can be interlinked, stored, and accessed via one unique ID, The Indian Express reports.

The draft proposal, reviewed by the publication, says that this umbrella digital identity will empower the citizen by “putting her in control of these identities and providing her the option of choosing which one to use for what purpose”.

This “Federated Digital Identity” would also serve as a key to a registry where all different identities could be stored; state and central.

All the digital identities (Pan, Aadhaar, Voter ID) of a citizen can reportedly be interlinked with each other, which would eliminate the need for repeated verification process.

According to the report, the proposal is expected to soon be in the public domain and the Ministry will seek comments by 27 February.

Three Software Architecture Patterns Proposed

Apart from a unique umbrella ID, the new framework has also proposed three major software architectural patterns for different government agencies, the publication reported.

These have been proposed under the 2.0 version of India Enterprise Architecture (InDEA). Architecture here refers to a framework and set of guidelines to build new software systems.

The domain architecture pattern would be most suited to Central ministries as well as bodies that have substantial funding and involvement of the Central government.

The state architecture pattern would be suited to state governments, while a third 'InDEA Lite' architecture pattern is recommended for smaller departments of the Central and state governments.

The framework also suggests that information technology projects that are built under the new architecture must be interlinked and interoperable.

These projects must follow the government’s open application programming interface policy, which mandates that the source code of the project is available for everyone to tweak and improve upon.

(With inputs from The Indian Express)