Federated Digital Identities: Govt. moots plan to link digital IDs

What is the News?

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology(MeitY) has proposed to establish “Federated Digital Identities”.

What is 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: 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 rationale behind Federated Digital Identities?

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’.

Significance of Federated Digital Identities 

Firstly, 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.

Secondly, 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.

Source: This post is based on the article “Govt. moots plan to link digital IDs” published in The Hindu on 31st Jan 2022.