Requiring biometric authentication out in the field in remote places that have spotty connectivity has turned out to be deeply problematic with the Aadhaar systems in India. Moreover, the inevitable false negatives in biometric matching has turned out to be a major cause of exclusion. Our idea has several simple parts that rely on existing technology that is low cost and easy to deploy in the field. It will provide a way for individuals to be authenticated while offline via a photo that is embedded in a QR code that is digitally signed by the issuing authority (UIDAI in India, for example). This makes the content tamper-proof. The shopkeeper, after verifying the authencity of the QR code, can manually match the face of the recipient with their photo and record the the result of identity verification, positive or negative, in an offline tamper-proof Point-of-Sale device in a non-repudiable way. At the end of the transaction the shopkeeper should issue a receipt using the PoS device to the purchaser, and also record a short video of a few seconds of the individual stating how much grain they received and at what cost. The entire transaction, along with the receipts, should be recorded in the tamper-proof PoS. Daily records, suitably signed and encrypted in the device, can then be transferred securely to an upstream database through physical means if necessary. The offline audit can either be manual or automatic or both.
This solves a significant problem whereby the welfare recipients do not have to depend on the benevolence of shopkeepers to not short change them on the amount of grain they are entitled to. Also the authentication is fail-safe and does not depend on use of unfamiliar instruments like passcodes or cryptographic keys. The agency of purchaser is required only for conducting the transaction and certifying its correctness. They often donot have the literacy to understand they error codes that are being returned by UIDAI for biometric or other online authentication. The transaction records and the video receipts can even be made public to enable the local collective to ensure the fairness of the welfare disbursement process.
This idea returns the process much closer to the old paper based methods of transactions and takes uncertain technology based on online matching of fingerprints out of the loop.
See https://www.ideasforindia.in/topics/productivity-innovation/an-offline-alternative-for-aadhaar-based-biometric-authentication.htmlfor more details.
