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Infosys co-founder and former CEO, Nandan Nilekani was recruited by the Prime Minister of India to become the Director of the Unique Identification Authority of India. Heading what is possibly the most complex and difficult task of identification the world has ever seen, Nandan’s goal is ambitious – to provide a unique identifying number to each of India’s 1.2 billion citizens. He spoke of the many challenges that he faces.

First, the process of enrollment. India has over 75 million citizens that are without a home address. There are over a 100 million people with no identification of any sort. He is devising ways of getting to this vast population in a relatively short time frame by utilizing numerous partners for this process – license bureaus, insurance companies, food ration stores, banks, hospitals, passport offices, etc. The idea is to provide an immediate benefit to the individual requesting the number. A daunting task! However, he is optimistic – he believes that the first 600 million IDs will be issued over the next four years. Given his track record as one of the drivers of modern India, I’m pretty sure he will achieve his goal.

The next challenge is to build the world’s largest biometric database because these numbers don’t come with cards. The form of identification is your fingerprint so you’ll never leave home without it. However, that means using hardware storage capacities that are intimidating.

Probably the biggest issue is that of de-duplication. When a person applies for an identification number, his or her fingerprints have to be compared to the hundreds of millions of existing ones in this monolithic database to ensure that they are not trying to get a duplicate ID issued. This is an extremely complex computing issue that will require algorithms hitherto unimagined.

Adding to this are the obvious security and social issues (like privacy) that are an innate part of a project of this magnitude. Nandan is very positive that he can achieve this. When I asked him why he would leave a successful corporate life for the headaches of this massive project, his answer was simple, “it’s the single largest social project in the history of this country and will prove to be a game changer for India.” He certainly changed the game of technology in India with Infosys. Now, he’s playing on the world stage.