The Maharashtra government is mulling over preparing ‘metadata’ along the lines of the Aadhar number, which will have all the necessary details of an individual.
The Maharashtra government is mulling over preparing ‘metadata’ along the lines of the Aadhar number, which will have all the necessary details of an individual. The data bank of citizens will have copies of the citizens’ birth certificate, caste certificate, bank account details and even details of the mark sheets of exams that the concerned person has appeared for.
The state government has claimed that the data will help citizens to get their work done faster as they will not have to produce documents.
“Metadata is a concept that will have necessary details of the citizens required for the government. We want to reduce paper work for citizens and make services provided by the government easy for them. The details of the citizens include birth certificate, bank account number, PAN, caste certificate etc,” principal secretary of IT department Vijay Kumar Gautam told The Asian Age.
To a query on how the metadata would be different from the Aadhar card, the official said the details acquired for it would be different. “The data collected for the Aadhar card would be used for the metadata but it will also have more details about citizens,” Mr Gautam said.
On the security aspect of the data, the official said that proper precaustions are being taken so that the data is not misused. “We will have various techniques to protect the data by building firewalls at various stages. Complete care will be take so protect the data, as it includes personal details of the people,” he said.
Elaborating on metadata, the official said the government does not want the people to be harassed while dealing with various paper work required during several procedures. “Government certificates are required at various stages but people have to produce lot of proof and the process becomes time consuming. With implementation of Right to Information, we are offering a few services in stipulated time. But the people also should get things done without much paper work and, therefore, the emphasis is on the metadata system. Why will a student have to seek a caste certificate every time when his family has one The metadata will cut the red tape,” Mr Gautam added.
However, technology experts expressed fear about security aspect of the project, as all other government data projects including Aadhar have failed on a few parameters.
“In such a huge data collection process, there are chances of theft, mislinking, insufficient backup facility and lack of disaster recovery if system breaks. The government should think on these security aspects independently and also keep minimum human intervention to avoid data theft. In respect to Aadhar, for example, there had been several complaints of loss of data and mislinking of information,” Ruturaj Patki, technology expert said.
