A new article that explores how biometric IDs empower women and the poor.

1. © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 20151
A report from The Economist Intelligence Unit
Identifying a better future
How biometric IDs empower
women and the poor
When Pakistani officials travelled to the country’s poorest and most remote regions to
encourage citizens to register for identity cards, they encountered a problem: Many
men did not want their wives to participate.
The registration process employs biometric technology, which uses fingerprint scans
and facial recognition software to create unique identity profiles that can be
uploaded onto cards or databases. Tariq Malik, who ran the campaign for Pakistan’s
National Database & Registration Authority (NADRA), said this process made many
husbands uncomfortable.
“In some areas where there is the influence of the Taliban, the men said no. They said
that women can’t be photographed or they can’t have the male workers holding their
wives’ hands to take fingerprints,” said Mr Malik.
So NADRA opened 13 offices that employed only women, hiring local residents who
could inform their mothers and sisters about the benefits of obtaining a legal identity,
such as securing the right to vote and to obtain government services. On the day the
first female-only office opened, 3,000 women arrived. From 2008 to 2014, more than 21
million Pakistani women chose to register for a digital identity, increasing the number of
registered women in the country by 104 percent.1
1 Technology in the Service of Development: The NADRA Story. Tariq Malik. Center for Global Development, Nov. 5, 2014.
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2. 2
Identifying a better future
How biometric IDs empower women and the poor
The right to a unique legal identity is one that most people in developed economies
take for granted, but worldwide nearly 2 billion people have no means of proving that
they are who they say they are.2
The vast majority of these individuals are poor and live
in the developing world; in some sub-Saharan countries, more than half the population
lacks a legal identity, the World Bank reports. This means they can be excluded from
some of the most basic aspects of civic life, such as voting in an election, opening a
bank account or accessing services like healthcare or education.
Weak identification systems can also hamper governments’ ability to provide services
to the poor. In India, for example, more than 58 percent of subsidised grain did not
reach the intended recipients in 2008.3
“There was a lack of basic identity documentation, and the databases we had were
extremely dirty, as we call it, because there were so many duplicates,” says Anit
Mukherjee, an IDRC fellow at the Center for Global Development, who was part of the
team that developed India’s biometric identity program, the world’s largest, known as
Aadhaar.
Starting in 2011, the team travelled to small villages and remote areas of the country,
scanning fingerprints and irises and linking this information to demographic data such
as date of birth and parents’ names. With a decentralised enrolment process and a
centralised database, participants can sign up in their villages and then travel
anywhere in the country, since their 12-digit identity number can be accessed online.
To date, 950 million of the country’s 1.2 billion citizens have enrolled, says Mr Mukherjee.
Aadhaar has enabled government administrators to weed out duplications and other
forms of corruption in many programmes. For example, subsidies for goods like food
and cooking oil are now sent directly to beneficiaries, rather than distributed through a
third party. As a result, the Indian government saved $2 billion last year by streamlining
the cooking-oil distribution process alone, says Mr Mukherjee.
Equally impressive savings have been realised in other regions. For example, the World
Bank4
reports that officials in Guinea-Bissau found 4,000 non-existent workers on the
government payroll, and Nigerian authorities say they cut 43,000 “ghost workers”, a
measure that saved $67 million.
Of course, the idea of scanning irises and inputting fingerprints into electronic
databases makes some people uneasy, conjuring up images from an Orwell novel.
While he understands the concerns, Mr Mukherjee notes that a biometric identity is
significantly less vulnerable to hacking or identity theft than older forms—forging a
fingerprint or iris scan is vastly more difficult than hacking a firewall or copying a
signature. “It is a far more robust system than people realise,” he says.
2 Digital IDs for Development: Access to Identity and Services for All. Mariana Dahan and Randeep Sundan. The World Bank,
April 2015.
3 The Evolution of India’s UID Program: Lessons Learned and Implications for Other Developing Countries. Frances Zelazny. The
Center for Global Development, August 2012. Digital IDs For Development.
4 Digital IDs For Development.
Weak
identification
systems can
also hamper
governments’
ability to
provide services
to the poor.

3. 3
Identifying a better future
How biometric IDs empower women and the poor
On the other hand, the strength of these systems could make it more difficult for
individuals to challenge errors, as presumptions might be biased toward the computer,
note Alan Gelb and Julia Clark in a CGD Working Paper, Identification for
Development: The Biometrics Revolution.5
They also point out that facial recognition
software can capture individuals’ images without their consent, raising privacy
concerns. There is also an issue of exclusion, as obtaining fingerprints is not always
possible for manual laborers and the elderly.
Ensuring that identification systems protect privacy means staying ahead of the
technological curve, Mr Mukherjee says. It also means having a clear vision of each
programme’s intent—for example, to deliver better government services—and ensure
that the system serves that long-term goal.
“When you build identity systems today, you are not building for the next five years.
You’re building for the next 50 years,” says Mr Mukherjee. “So it’s important to be clear
on the strategic vision and then build accordingly.”
In Pakistan, empowering the country’s poorest women was a key part of the game
plan. Mariana Dahan, coordinator of the World Bank’s Identification for Development
(ID4D) Working Group, says that with an official digital identity, women are able to
assert their rights to own property, file for divorce, or register children born outside of
marriage.
“It gives them access to rights and services that they didn’t have before,” she says.
In that country, biometric identity cards are used to ensure that government payments
go directly to female beneficiaries and can’t be intercepted by male relatives, as has
often been the case under less-secure identification systems.
Pakistani women receiving payments through this system report that they have greater
confidence and more bargaining power in their families since receiving their IDs.
“They feel empowered and have a sense of identity for the first time. Their money
belongs to them and only to them,” says Ms Dahan.
A background paper coauthored by Ms Dahan, The Identification for Development
(ID4D) Agenda: Its Potential for Empowering Women and Girls,6
reports that the
majority of recipients say they are able to spend their payments as they choose, which
appears to have beneficial effects on their families, as the majority say they spend the
money primarily on food and healthcare.
5 Identification for Development: The Biometrics Revolution. Alan Gelb and Julia Clark. The Center for Global Development,
January 2013.
6 The Identification for Development (ID4D) Agenda: Its Potential for Empowering Women and Girls. Mariana Dahan and
Lucia Hanmer. The World Bank, 2015.
In Pakistan,
biometric
identity cards
are used to
ensure that
government
payments go
directly to
female
beneficiaries
and can’t be
intercepted by
male relatives.