Security News > 2022 > February > Sri Lanka to adopt India’s Aadhaar digital identity scheme

Sri Lanka has decided to adopt a national digital identity framework based on biometric data and will ask India if it can implement that nation's Aadhaar scheme.

The island nation had previous indicated it would work with the Modular Open Source Identity Platform, an organisation based in India that offers tools governments can use to create and manage digital identities.

A list of Cabinet decisions published on Tuesday, Sri Lanka's government announced its intention to ask India for a grant of its scheme, which has been widely interpreted as meaning India share Aadhaar technology.

Aadhaar sees Indian citizens and residents issued a twelve-digit identity number, linked to either a fingerprint or iris scan, and is used to authenticate users of government services.

If Sri Lanka's government is not aware of Aadhaar's colorful past, it won't be long before someone points it out given that the Cabinet decision requires India and Sri Lanka to agree a memorandum of understanding to arrange the tech transfer.

By happy co-incidence, Sri Lanka's decision came on the same day that the Philippines government signed off on a Circular calling on all public agencies to integrate the PhilSys digital identity scheme that was initiated in 2020 and then stuttered after a registration portal struggled to cope with traffic demands.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/02/09/sri_lanka_to_adopt_indias/