The first phase of the State government’s unified registry project, under which a centralised platform will be created to identify and select beneficiaries of various social welfare schemes, is set to be launched by April.
The unified registry is aimed at optimisation of the beneficiary selection process and avoiding duplication. Since the government funds more than 400 social welfare schemes spread over various departments, there have been cases of overlap.
According to Snehil Singh, Director, Kerala State IT Mission, the basic structure for the registry is ready to be rolled out in a couple of months.
“The idea behind the registry is data-driven policymaking. The required data will be provided by the department while the registry will be able to optimise it in terms of finances, resources and identification of resources. In the first phase, we will be holding the databases of social security pension disbursal and of the Civil Supplies Department. Through this system, we will be able to quickly identify people who are eligible for a particular benefit and whether they are drawing similar benefits from other departments. All kinds of duplication issues can be addressed in the first phase itself,” Mr. Singh told The Hindu .
The mission is in the process of purchasing an Aadhaar Data Vault for the project, to protect the information provided by the citizens to the various departments. The Cabinet, which had cleared the project in September last year, had cleared an amount of ₹34.32 crore for the first phase.
Mr. Singh said at present, the different databases of the departments exist in silos, with no interaction happening between each other. There would be no new data collection for the purpose. The existing databases from the departments would be consolidated in one place under the registry to gain better insights in beneficiary selection.
“The government has an open data policy and hence the entire data will be available for all departments to use. Due to this, there will be low waste of efforts and better optimisation in terms of planning and service design also,” he said.
Regarding concerns of exclusion whenever Aadhaar is used for welfare schemes, he said it would not be a “black and white system”, with the checks and balances at the departmental level ensuring that there would be no exclusion.
