The New York Times section in yesterday’s Toronto Star carried an article that first appeared on September 2 “A Digital Plan to Help India’s Poor.” India is in the midst of creating a biometric database of its 1.2 billion citizens.
But even more radical than its size is the scale of its ambition: to reduce the inequality corroding India’s economic rise by digitally linking every one of India’s people to the country’s growth juggernaut.
The system is intended to be used to verify identities anywhere in the country within eight seconds, using inexpensive hand-held devices linked to mobile phone networks. Of course, the story notes that privacy watchdogs worry about abuse of the identity numbers by state agencies that pay little attention to civil liberties.
The approach, to implement the massive system using veterans from India’s private technology sector is intriguing. The project is intentionally avoiding being captive to the massive bureaucracy that characterizes India’s civil service.
How can digital technology be used to improve conditions for Canada’s lower income households? In the past, I have written about the need to increase the number of homes with computers in the lowest income quintile. Currently only half of these households have a computer. How can we improve the ability of all Canadians to participate in a digital economy?