Citizen databases: Taming the billion

A population of one billion may be difficult to manage but it offers a market

that is unique in terms of opportunity and challenge–especially if the job at

hand is to create a database and issue an ID card to each member therein.

Just consider the kind of wide area IP network that the election commission

(EC) has in place to manage a database almost half the size of the present

Indian population: 1,500 centers, a mix of leased lines, VSATs, dial-up RAS and

modem arrays across 32 states and union territories terminating in a GIS system

and a Web server in Delhi. However, the union ministry of home plans to achieve

much more than the EC–not only capturing information about each of these one

billion citizens, but also to create a mechanism that would enable regular

updating of the data. The ministry also realizes that in order to achieve 100%

results the country needs to complete the task in less than five years.

In technology terms, according to the TCS feasibility report on the citizen

database project submitted to the ministry of home affairs, this translates into

a massive five-tier network comprising 15,000 collection points, 462 access

layers, five backbone layers and one central data warehouse.

Click here

to read the complete report on TCS’s feasibility study on the Nishan project.