Ensuring Uniqueness:

Collecting iris biometrics for

the Unique ID Mission
 Table of contents

1 BACKGROUND......................................................................................................................................... 3
2 THE NEED FOR IRIS IN THE UIDAI .................................................................................................. 4
2.1 ENSURING UNIQUENESS .................................................................................................................................. 4
2.2 ENSURING INCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................... 5
2.3 OTHER BENEFITS .............................................................................................................................................. 6
3 IRIS TECHNOLOGY ................................................................................................................................ 8
3.1 OVERVIEW ......................................................................................................................................................... 8
3.2 HOW DO WE CAPTURE THE IRIS IMAGE?.................................................................................................... 10
3.3 DEVICES USED FOR IRIS CAPTURE ............................................................................................................... 10
4 QUESTIONS SURROUNDING THE ADOPTION OF IRIS ............................................................. 10
4.1 QUESTIONS SURROUNDING IRIS TECHNOLOGY ......................................................................................... 10
4.2 FUTURE TRENDS ............................................................................................................................................ 13
5 ONGOING IMPLEMENTATIONS ....................................................................................................... 14
6 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................... 15
7 ANNEXURE A ......................................................................................................................................... 16
1 Background
The goal of the Unique ID project is to issue a unique identity number to every resident
in the country. The Unique Identification number (UID) will be linked to the resident’s
basic demographic and biometric details, and stored in the UIDAI central database.

Providing a unique identity to all residents, particularly the poor, would help ensure
access for residents to services and resources such as health, education and welfare
programs, as well as banking and insurance. It would allow governments to confirm that
key services were delivered to the poor and eliminate the leakages and duplicates
across government databases; the universal identity number would also ensure that
people would not be denied services due to the lack of identification documents.

Ensuring the uniqueness and inclusiveness of the number are therefore, overarching
priorities for the UIDAI. The collection of an individual’s biometric attributes, and
linking it to their UID, becomes essential to ensuring the uniqueness of the UID.

However, as we collect biometric information, we need to ensure that certain concerns

are addressed. The biometric information collected must be sufficient and effective for
de-duplicating the identity of the resident – if it cannot de-duplicate the resident
effectively, the biometric information becomes useless in ensuring the uniqueness of
the number, and in accurately authenticating the individual before they can access
services.

The biometric attributes should also be easy and cost-effective to collect and de-
duplicate, for all ages and income groups, in order to ensure that UID enrolment and
authentication is inclusive of the poor. And finally, to ensure that various agencies and
systems can use the UID in identity verification, the capture and use of biometric
information for the number must be standardized.

The UIDAI considered all these factors before taking a decision on the biometric
information it would collect. It constituted the Biometric Committee on September 29,
2009 under the chairmanship of the Director General, NIC to recommend the biometric
standards for the project. The committee, during its deliberations, undertook wide
consultations with biometric experts and academics on the information it should collect,
and the potential costs.

Based on the report of the Biometric Committee, and an evaluation of the potential costs
and benefits of the various biometrics, the UIDAI decided to collect iris biometrics from
residents, in addition to all ten fingerprints and face photograph.
This is the first time that iris will be collected on a national scale in our country, and we
therefore, provide an assessment of the factors that led to this decision, as well as an
overview on a fast-maturing, and effective new biometric technology.

2. The need for iris in the UID Project

2.1 Ensuring uniqueness

The Biometrics Committee played a key role in helping the UIDAI determine the
biometrics to be used in UID enrolment, and the standards to be adopted. The
Committee submitted its report on 7th January 2010 to the Chairman of the UIDAI1.
Prior to recommending the type of biometrics to be captured, the Biometrics Committee
debated a key challenge that the UIDAI faces – that of ensuring the uniqueness of
biometrics across a population of 1.2 billion people.

To ensure uniqueness, the UIDAI has to minimize the false acceptance rate (FAR) in its
biometrics. However, the Biometrics Committee noted that the approach using
fingerprint biometrics alone, in addition to face, faces two challenges in ensuring
uniqueness and low FAR within the Indian environment – the varying quality of
fingerprints, particularly among poor residents; and the scale of the database, at 1.2
billion records2. Both these challenges could make uniqueness in biometrics difficult to
achieve.

The risk that fingerprinting may not be sufficient to ensure uniqueness is not a risk that
can be ignored, particularly when enrolling residents on such a large scale. The cost and
logistics of going back and re-enrolling residents, in case the biometrics set is
insufficient, would be unacceptable.

The addition of iris to finger and face biometrics would help the UIDAI achieve accuracy
rates that go beyond 95%, and would ensure very low FAR. This will also make the UID
number highly robust, and enable the number to be used in a wide variety of
applications that require high security, such as in financial transactions.

Consequently, the Biometric Committee, following consultations with international

experts, recommended that combining the use of two biometrics – fingerprints and iris
– would help ensure the uniqueness and accuracy of biometrics in the Indian context.
The report stated, ‘fused score of two uncorrelated [biometric] modalities will provide
better accuracy than any single modality.’3

1 The Biometrics Committee report is available at:

http://www.uidai.gov.in/documents/Biometrics_Standards_Committee%20report.pdf
2 Page 4, Executive Summary, Biometrics Committee report
3 Page 5, Executive Summary, Biometrics Committee report
The relevant recommendation of the Committee dealing with iris reads as follows:

“While 10 finger biometric and photographs can ensure de-duplication accuracy

higher than 95% depending upon quality of data collection, there may be a need to
improve the accuracy and also create higher confidence level in the de-duplication
process. Iris biometric technology, as explained above, is an additional emerging
technology for which the Committee has defined standards. It is possible to improve
de-duplication accuracy by incorporating iris. Accuracy as high as 99% for iris has
been achieved using Western data. However, in the absence of empirical Indian
data, it is not possible for the Committee to precisely predict the improvement in the
accuracy of de-duplication due to the fusion of fingerprint and iris scores. The
UIDAI can consider the use of a third biometric in iris, if they feel it is required for
the Unique ID project.”

It is clear from the above that while the Committee unequivocally recognized the
potential improvements in accuracy through the addition of iris as well as the need for
the iris biometric, it left the final decision on this to the UIDAI. In view of this, the UIDAI
reviewed the report of the Committee and took a conscious and considered decision to
incorporate iris into the UID biometric set.

2.2 Ensuring inclusion

The addition of the iris to the biometric information the UIDAI collects is also important
to ensure the inclusion of the large part of the population. There are two important
challenges of inclusion that the UIDAI faces:

Ensuring the inclusion of poor residents: India faces unique challenges in collecting
biometrics from its rural population and the poor. The poor, due to occupations that
usually involve physical labour, have fingerprints that are worn out and difficult to
capture4.

Experts estimate that the challenges in collecting the biometrics of the poor would be
lower in the case of iris devices. The iris does not get worn out with age, or with use. It
even remains unaffected by most eye surgery. Consequently the use of iris biometrics
would help ensure that poor residents are not left out of UID enrolment.

Ensuring the inclusion of children: Collecting and de-duplicating the biometrics of

children is a challenge – face and finger biometrics are not stable until the age of 16. The
lack of de-duplication of a child’s biometrics would require that the child’s UID be linked

4 Page 30, Annexure II, Biometrics Committee report; Also see IDC & Acuity Market Research Reports
to the parents’ UIDs in the database and the child’s ID is not issued on the basis of de-
duplication of his/her biometrics. This however, increases the risk of duplicates/fakes
among UIDs for children. Such UIDs would represent a significant proportion of the
UIDs issued, since the percentage of population below 15 years of age is 35.3% as per
the 2001 Census.

The iris presents a potential means to issue the majority of children a unique number
linked to their biometrics, since the iris stabilizes at a very young age. Unlike finger-
prints, the iris is said to be fully developed at the time of birth itself.

The limitation on iris capture of a child only due to the requirement for a child to follow
the instructions of keeping his/her eyes open before the iris camera. On an average, the
age at which the child can understand and follow such instructions will be around 4
years.

If we use iris, we would be able to reduce the size of our inaccurate UID sub-set ( due to
the inability to de-duplicate) from 35% to 11% (the percentage of population below
four years of age as per the 2001 Census). This will be a significant gain in terms of
accuracy.

2.3 Other benefits

There are other additional benefits from collecting iris, along with face and fingerprints.
These include:
i) Comfort: The addition of iris as a third biometric would not be intrusive. As
is visible from the photographs below – taken at one of UIDAI’s biometric test
centres in Andhra Pradesh – iris capture also does not involve physical
contact with the resident, making it a comfortable experience.
Figures: Iris capture in AP for UIDAI

Iris image capture is normally done at a distance of 18” to 24”, and the image
can be taken quite quickly, in less than fifteen seconds per image. The
experience is similar to having the resident’s photograph taken, except that
the camera is brought closer to the face during capture of the image.

Only minimal instructions – ‘look at the camera, keep your eyes open’ – are
required to take an iris image.

ii) Ease of use: Both fingerprint devices and iris devices are not difficult to use
with a trained operator. Newer iris devices however, are also auto-focus and
auto-capture and will prevent the operator from taking an out-of-focus
image.

iii) Reducing risks in execution: UID enrolment will take place on a large scale
and in diverse environments across the country. While the enrolment
processes and systems will be standardised, the UIDAI cannot guarantee high
quality across its thousands of enrolment points. Collecting iris in addition to
fingerprints will help limit the risk of low quality in the biometric data
collected.

iv) Reducing technology risks: There are significant technology risks in the
UID project – there are for instance, no examples to follow, with no previous
such technology implementations of this scale. The project also pushes the
boundaries of existing de-duplication and authentication technologies, due to
the project’s unprecedented size.

While ten fingerprints, when collected with care with special emphasis on
quality can give us high accuracy, this faces some uncertainties, considering
the technology challenges stated above. The use of iris as an additional (and
uncorrelated) biometric mitigates the project’s technology risks
considerably.

v) De-duplication Process: During the deliberations of the Biometrics

Committee, it was pointed out by experts that iris de-duplication is today,
much faster than finger-print de-duplication. More importantly, multi-modal
de-duplication, while keeping iris as the primary means of de-duplication, can
be made to work much faster than single mode de-duplication. Given the
flexibility that the UIDAI wants on de-duplication, and the possibility that the
 UIDAI may like to reduce the time taken to achieve universal coverage, the
speed of finger-print de-duplication should not become a limiting factor in
project implementation.

vi) Applications: The requirement of uniqueness and accuracy in UID-linked

biometrics is a function of the applications which utilize the residents’ data.
The applications that use the UID would be many and varied – as an example,
an application may use UIDs to monitor the coverage of immunizations, and
may not require very significant accuracy. However, if UIDs are to be used to
authenticate financial transactions and micro-payments, then even a small
percentage of inaccuracies in UID-linked biometric data may make the data
unusable for these purposes. Hence, compromises made on uniqueness and
accuracy may limit the use of the UID in critical applications.

vii) Security: It is highly desirable to have access to an additional biometric trait,

from the viewpoint of national security. It is possible to disguise facial
features, and mask fingerprints through cuts and bruises. It is much harder to
alter iris along with the face and fingerprint. Iris use has consequently
become more common in national security and border control applications
worldwide.

viii) Future development of identity systems: The use of biometric systems for
verifying identity is growing rapidly around the world, and both fingerprint
and iris vendors are expanding their market. The use of both iris and
fingerprint within the UID project will ensure that the number is still usable,
if either technology gains ground for identity verification in the future.

It is for the reasons stated above that the UIDAI has decided to include iris along with
face and fingerprints, in its biometrics.

3 Iris Technology
3.1 Overview

While the benefits of using iris biometrics are important to consider, not much is known
about how iris biometrics systems function. Here, the paper provides an overview on
iris biometrics and the technology that is used.

The iris of the eye is a protected organ, which controls the diameter of the pupils – the
centre part of the eye – and the amount of light entering the eye.
Figure 1: The iris of the eye Figure 2: The eye structure

The front, pigmented layer of the iris, seen in Figure 1 above, contains random patterns
that are visible and highly stable. These patterns are also highly intricate, and unique to
every individual. The iris faces very little wear, and can consequently serve as a secure,
always available passport that an individual can present for verification.

The field of iris biometrics has seen significant research and investment over the last
decade, and at this point, iris capture has become a mainstream technology with wide
acceptance. In India, over 50 million people have been enrolled using iris recognition
systems in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. Feedback on these systems has been positive
both from enrolling agencies and state government officials. Mexico is also using iris for
its version of Unique ID to deliver public benefits to its entire population.

De-duplication through iris has been carried out on a large scale – one implementation
that de-duplicated the entry of immigrants into a country has carried out five trillion iris
comparisons since 2001. In Andhra Pradesh, the government has carried out 6.26
quintillion matches in two months for its PDS programs in 2009.

According to one research firm, iris is the fastest growing segment of biometrics market
and will have the largest market share in next ten years. Responding to the increased
demand, the technology has become rapidly cheaper, with a friendlier user experience.

3.2 How do we capture the iris image?

The capture of the iris image is identical to taking a regular photograph, except that it
operates in the infrared region, nearly invisible to our eye. The figure below (Figure 3)
shows the process for capturing the iris image. The camera captures the image of the
iris; the image generated is permanently stored in the database, and is used for
matching while verifying the identity of the resident, as well as for de-duplication.

Figure 3: Iris capture sequence

3.3 Devices used for iris capture

The devices that are used for capturing the iris image depends on the purpose –
whether it is for enrolling a resident, or for identity authentication. There are two main
types of devices that are commonly used
used: hand held and wall mounted.

Wall mounted devices,, which are an older version of the iris device, are usually used for
access control applications. Newer, handand held and mobile devices are used for ee-
governance applications, and for iris enrolment. The devices presently being tested by
the UIDAI are mobile devices suitable
suitable for enrolling people in rural and remote areas.

Figure 4: Mobile iris device

evice Figure 5: Iris and face camera

4 Questions surrounding the adoption of iris

4.1 Questions surrounding iris technology

There are however, some questions and concerns around iris, which are explained
below.

i) Is there a risk of vendor lock-in

lock in the UIDAI project?: A concern that has
been expressed about the use of iris, is that the technology is a proprietary
one – the fear is that once
o the UIDAI selects a vendor, it will be per
permanently
tied to the company,, and unable to migrate to a different vendor in the future
due to prohibitive switching costs. In this scenario, where the UIDAI is
locked-in,
in, the vendor can then charge unreasonable prices for maintenance
and upgrades, and be negligent in providing support.

The UIDAI however, doesn’t expect such problems with iris technology. The
UID Authority had carefully evaluated the available choices among existing
iris technology vendors, and concluded tthat lock-in can
an be avoided. The
UIDAI intends to adopt a three
three-pronged approach to avoid lock-in:
in:
 - The use of standards: The International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) has published the iris image standard (ISO 19794-6), and the
majority of iris vendors support this standard, thus ensuring
interoperability for images. The National Institute of Science and
Technology (NIST)5reports that, “The interoperability of standardized iris
images in I R E X is better than that reported for standard fingerprint
minutiae templates.” The UIDAI is capturing and storing all iris images as
ISO standard-compliant, using open standard PNG format. With the iris
images not tied to any vendor specifications, UIDAI can use any iris
software vendor and replace one vendor with another without a problem.

- Use of multiple iris capture devices: There is significant competition in the

iris field – the industry has over a dozen vendors spread across the US,
Europe and Asia. Several large fingerprint vendors are also leaders in iris,
including L-1, Sagem and CrossMatch. The UIDAI is conducting its Proof of
Concept (PoC) studies with iris capture devices made by four different
vendors, and will be testing several more devices in the laboratory. The
UIDAI will encourage open competition in the field of iris capture devices,
and will not depend on any single, or any single group of vendors.

- Active promotion of new vendors: The base technology that is used in

iris capture is also used in several unrelated applications. There are
consequently, numerous vendors which are capable of making iris
cameras. The Indian industry has a unique opportunity to capture this
market, particularly considering that India will be becoming the largest
consumer of biometric devices with the UIDAI project. The UIDAI is
promoting and actively growing this eco-system, with the goal of creating
several new vendors in the next few years.

- Standard Bio-APIs: With a view to avoid vendor lock-in and achieve

inter-operability and pluggability, ISO has come up with a Bio-API
standard (ISO/IEC 19784-1 (2006)) which standardizes the interface
among biometric devices and other components of the software. These
standards are being used in the UIDAI PoCs, and will also be used at the
Pilot and implementation stages. This means that our enrolment software
will remain unchanged, and the UIDAI would be able to plug in any
biometric device (finger-print or iris) as and when we need it.

ii) Is iris a new, untried technology?: There is some worry that iris
technology is new and untested. While fingerprint recognition is over 150
years old, iris matching was patented only forty years ago. However even in

5 NIST Interagency report 7629

 this short span of time, iris has got a reputation for high accuracy, and is
widely used in security and access control applications where accuracy is
paramount. Iris technology has been used both in India and internationally
with success. The UK, Canada, US and the UAE are using iris extensively for
identity verification and de-duplication at their borders. In Andhra Pradesh,
the Ministry of Civil Supplies has implemented iris technology across its
database of ration card holders, with anecdotally low reject rates and high
enrolment. This has been supported by experiences with iris in Orissa, within
a pilot for the UNFWP program. As NIST6 reports, “Iris recognition [matches]
the level of technical maturity and interoperability of fingerprint bio- metrics,
and has affirmed the potential for using iris biometrics...for large-scale
identity management applications.”
iii) Is manufacturing capacity available for iris capture devices?: As iris is a
relatively new technology and its usage is limited, the manufacturing
capacities in existence today is not significant. Hence, the concern is that if
iris is included in the biometric set for UIDAI project, there will be a large
demand for iris capture equipment which won’t be fulfilled, and the
implementation will be affected due to the limited production capacity in the
industry.
However manufacturing capacity of iris vendors is at present, determined by
existing demand. The UIDAI project would create substantial, new demand
for iris devices, and the manufacturing capacity will go up over the coming
years. This will also present Indian vendors with an opportunity to enter this
space, and has the potential to make India a hub for biometric device
manufacturing. The exponential use of consumer grade digital cameras has
also helped reduce the manufacturing cost and complexity of iris camera.
iv) Will collecting iris biometrics be expensive?: A concern with iris has been
on cost. However, the current high prices for iris technology are a result of
low volume and its use in cost insensitive security applications. Considering
the large demand that will come from India for iris devices and software, the
UIDAI expects the prices for iris devices and software will fall rapidly. The
UIDAI, taking into account expert assessments, expects iris software to be
less expensive by 30-50% compared to fingerprint matching software.
When it comes to enrolment, logistics (travel, manpower etc.) contributes to
the major part of the enrolment cost. The cost of the biometric capture
devices (equipment and its operation) is not a substantial portion of the cost.
A rough estimate puts the incremental cost for iris enrolment in 2010 is to be
Rs. 4.4 per enrolee, which will fall over the next few years as the project
scales up7. The estimated incremental cost is less than Rs. 3 for the iris
device, Rs. 0.75 in labour cost and Rs. 0.75 for software cost per enrolee.

6 NIST Interagency report 7629

7 See Annexure A for cost estimates.
 Considering the risks discussed previously and the value addition that iris
inclusion provides, the additional cost is definitely acceptable for a project of
this size and importance. In fact, the cost-benefit ratio, if computed
rigorously, will be overwhelmingly in favor of including iris in the biometrics
set for the UIDAI. At a macro level, the use of iris will add an estimated Rs.
500 Crores to the project cost. This is well worth the improvements and value
addition that the iris biometric will provide.
v) Will agencies be required to use iris reader devices to authenticate
residents?: It would not be necessary for agencies to authenticate residents
through iris. The use of iris biometrics in the UID project is primarily
required for a) inclusion of the poor, and b) for de-duplicating the resident
before enrolment, which requires extremely high accuracy since the
biometric record is compared to the entire database (1:N comparison).
For authentication, the use of fingerprinting will be sufficient, since the
comparison would be between the biometric collected by the agency, and the
UID-linked biometric in the database (1:1 comparison). However, having iris
in our database will enable any future iris-based authentication systems –
such as at the airports and other high security areas.
vi) Is iris difficult to capture?: One apprehension that exists is that the iris is
difficult to capture and the failure to register rate (FRR) are very high. This
concern is also based on the fact that earlier iris capture devices were
relatively primitive and inconvenient to use. During the last couple of years
however, there have been significant improvements in camera quality, and
there are now autofocus cameras available which capture the iris image more
or less the same way a picture is taken by a normal digital camera.

The Andhra Pradesh government for example, captured about 50 million iris
images with earlier cameras without any serious difficulty. Ease of use of iris
capture cameras has improved even further today.

It is mistakenly thought in some quarters that iris capture will be opposed

due to religious/ethnic sensitivities or due to other reasons rumors of laser
beams going into the eye and damaging it). This has not been found to be true
in the real world, and no such cases have been reported in the use of iris
capture. In fact, in countries such as the UAE where there are strong cultural
sensitivities, iris is being widely used in national programs.

4.2 Future Trends

In the last four years, organizations such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
Department of Home Land Security (DHS) and National Institute of Science &
Technology (NIST) have dramatically increased research and funding for iris. NIST has
also started several new initiatives on standardization, characterization and
interoperability conformance. The vendors have responded with friendlier, easy to use
devices, public support of standards and publication of performance benchmarks. We
anticipate better, cheaper devices and faster algorithms in 2010.

5 Ongoing Implementations
Mexico’s Social Security System
Mexico is the first large country that has collected fingerprint, iris and face biometrics of
the entire adult population, in order to provide social benefits. Prior to 2009, Mexico has
had a comprehensive social security program for its residents which used their version
of a unique ID number, which included fingerprints of two fingers.
In 2009, Mexico decided to add full biometric data to their Unique ID project, and
awarded the contract in December 2009 and January 2010 to a group of companies for
the collection of 10 fingerprints, dual iris and face photograph.
Mexico’s reasons for including iris in its program have been uniqueness, ensuring the
inclusion of the poor and high accuracy.

The UAE guest worker program

The UAE guest worker program is the largest national deployment so far of iris
technology. The program has deployed iris-based enrolment and identity verification
across the country’s 17 air land and sea ports, and is now in its third year of operation.
The program reports zero false matches.

Other implementations
Canada, UK, Netherlands and Singapore now use iris for border control and
immigration. The FBI in the USA has also begun collecting and storing iris images along
with fingerprint and photo.
 6 Conclusion
The adoption of new technology – including useful, socially conscious kinds – tends to
come with popular concerns and questions. Most of these concerns arise due to
unfamiliarity with the technology, and it is necessary to address them carefully and
thoroughly. Similar concerns have arisen in India as the government first begins to
collect iris biometrics on a national scale.

The decision to include iris in the UID initiative was a considered one, and took into
account the critical needs of the project in ensuring the uniqueness of the number, and
also so that residents are not excluded from enrolling for the UID. By guaranteeing the
universality and uniqueness of the UID, the initiative can have a substantial,
transformational impact in the lives of residents.

For residents, the UID can eventually become the single source of identity verification,
and they will be spared the challenge of repeatedly providing supporting identity
documents each time they wish to access services such as obtaining a ration card, a
driving license, and so on. The UID number would give residents mobility of identity,
since the number can be used anywhere in the country. The number will also help
improve access for the poor and underprivileged to services such as banking, education
and healthcare.

The UID will be vital to fulfilling the government’s vision for development – to ensure
that even as we grow, we broaden access to the economy and to our markets for our
residents. The UID would help us ensure that access to opportunity is not a privilege,
but a right. It would offer residents across India the security of our welfare systems, as
well as the opportunities of our markets. The effective implementation of a number –
one which guarantees both uniqueness, and inclusiveness – will mean a fundamental
transformation in our potential for equitable growth, and in the lives of Indians across
the country.
7 Annexure A
Cost estimation of iris use in UIDAI

The UIDAI estimates that the total incremental cost of iris capture and de-duplication to
be less than Rs. 4.4 per person. This cost can be further broken down into three
segments:

Cost component Cost per enrolment (in Rs.)

Capture device 2.9
Additional labour for iris capture 0.75
De-duplication software cost 0.75

These estimates are based on conservative assumptions including

a. The price of the iris camera remains at Rs. 1 lakh, and will not decrease over time or
with increasing demand and larger order quantity.
b. The iris camera will last an average of three years.
c. Iris capture takes one minute
d. Iris software price will not decrease over time or with larger volumes