The likes of NIIT, CMC and Aptech vying for the UID training pie

We would like to bank on our strength and choose the training part of the
courseware development," says Vijay Thadani, CEO, NIIT. Many beans have already
been spilled about the UID project that aims to provide unique identification
number to each and every citizen of the country, in order to enable all to
benefit from the services provided by the government. The UIDAI plans to train
about 1.04 lakh agents, and will need about 430 centers across major capital
cities in the country over the next four years. In order to complete 100%
enrollments in a period of four years, UIDAI has to train about 30,000 staff
members over next two years. Each enrollment center would have to complete at
least sixty enrollments to complete the massive target of enrolling 1.2 bn
people by 2014-15.

The scale of the UID project is gigantic and calls for active participation
of public and private sector agencies along with central, state and local
government. Henceforth, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has
invited expression of interest from top notch IT training institutes of the
country for taking upon the responsibility of creating trained workforce in a
short span of time. The major bidders for this project are NIIT, Aptech, HCL
Infosystems, CMC, Hero Mindmine, and C-DAC. The empaneled institutes will train
people involved in the UID project at all levels.

Training Requirements

To prevent duplicates and in-accuracies in the database, it is important to
feed verified biometric and demographic information in the database. Acquiring
uniformity and deftness at the level of data structuring and verification of
data requires the involved people to undergo not only training, but that too on
a standard courseware across all training centers. UIDAI has identified its
target audience intended for training. They are the staff from enrolling
agencies comprising of master trainers, trainers, enrollment operators,
supervisors and technical support staff. The second group of people comprises of
master trainers identified by UIDAI. The third group comprises of designated
officers from registrars, sub-registrars, UIDAI regional offices and program
management unit. The fourth group comprises of people from testing and
certification agency appointed by UIDAI. The reason for identifying the audience
lies in the realization that unique ID needs to be provided to citizens
belonging to all possible backgrounds and levels.

Who will bell the UID cat?

This unique kind of project necessitates the creation of the courseware based
on comprehensive instructional design approach. To train the mission critical
project personnels, the content has to be simple and interactive, supported by
multimedia tools and simulation based exercises in order to impart basic
computer skills, understanding of UID project, user information on UID client
application software, information on enrollment processes, soft skills and
technical aspects for troubleshooting. The content would be layered in the form
of modules that would introduce the UID process, basics of biometric devices and
interaction with citizen.

It is expected that the applicant should have the competency to develop the
complete courseware, training aids, instructional manuals in English and Hindi.
"The project scale is huge and henceforth, looks as if one particular training
institute may not be able to pull off an exercise of this size, even if it has a
pan-India presence," says Maneesh Mishra, expert, capacity building, UIDAI.

A Closer Look

HCL Infosystems: HCL Infosystems has its own training arm that offers three
different forms of trainingnamely, technical training, quality training and
soft skills training. Technical training deals with systems analysis and design,
programming languages, applications/software packages, networking, hardware
platforms, systems administration. The quality training covers configuration
management along with documentation of standards that ensure delivery of quality
products and services. The soft skills training encompasses training programs to
enhance communication skill, leadership, time and stress management. HCL
presently has fifty-seven training centers across the country.

The already existing training programs have, both the tech and biometric
elements in it. HCL is capable of providing hardware, software and the services
required to roll out such a project. HCL has already provided a smart card based
PDS solution in Chandigarh which very much resonates with the UID project. Very
interestingly, HCL Career Development Center (CDC) has gone a long way to create
alliances with Confederation of NGOs of Rural India (CNRI) for a pan-India roll
out of Centre for Development of Employable Skills (CDES). "Reaching out to the
grassroots is not an easy task and requires some kind of alliance with NGOs as
we have in HCL," says George Paul, executive vice president, HCL Infosystems. If
empaneled, the company would like to take care of both the training and testing
aspect of the project. The company wants to focus on capacity building in terms
of providing the services in Hindi.

NIIT: NIIT has training solutions in IT, business process outsourcing,
banking, finance and insurance, executive management education, and
communication and professional life skills. NIIT is a major player in the
education and training space, and has expertise in learning content development,
training delivery and education process management, making it the most preferred
training partner. It has an enormous network of training centers across the
country, connecting the nooks and corners. NIIT has approximately 525 training
institutes across the country.

In terms of experience, NIIT has had the opportunity of working on a lot of
training programs involving biometrics. The NIIT Institute has incorporated
design and implementation of a biometric sensor based security system. This is
very similar to the UID project. NIIT is positive about UID, because of its
track record in large projects, brand and specialization. NIIT too has community
learning centers to enhance employability among youth in urban slums. This
replicates to some extent the expertise in reaching out to the grassroots in
terms of training. "We would like to bank on our strength and choose the
training part of the courseware development,", says Vijay Thadani, CEO, NIIT. If
empaneled, the company would like to concentrate on the training aspects of the
UID project.

CMC: CMC is one of the foremost leading IT consulting, services and BPO
organizations. With its pan global presence, CMC offers training solutions for
corporates, government and institutions on interactive platforms such as
e-learning. CMC has been offering training packages for local, state and central
government. It has a unique application such as a comprehensive social welfare
monitoring application for tribals, and other marginalized sections of society.
CMC has about 150 authorized training centers across the country. The
information that, TCS is planning to leverage CMCs training infrastructure for
UID project is the talk of the town.

CMC offers solutions which are highly scalable and interoperable with lower
maintenance costs and high operational efficiency. CMC has hands-on experience
on a lot of e-governance projects. More specifically on the biometrics front,
CMC has implemented a solution called iCOMITRAX, a computerized information
system for trade tax, in Chhattisgarh. This particular project entailed
co-ordination with external agencies involved in tax assessment, collection and
enforcement in the course of their functioning. The project used fingerprinting
devices in combination with other technologies to establish the identity of a
person, and provide services such as issue of birth and death certificates and
ration cards through citizen service centers. If empaneled, CMC would be
leveraging its technical know how, experience and relationship with the
government institutions for UID project.

Aptech: Aptech has been in the training and education space for the past
twenty-six years. The different training programs offered are sales training,
soft skills training, management development program, customer servicing
training, product training and process training. If carefully observed, each of
these offerings bear some or the other relevance to the UID project. "The UID
project majorly deals with the correct uploading of data to avoid duplication
and henceforth, it is vital to focus on people management," says GSS Gopal
Krishna, business head, training solutions, Aptech. Aptech has around 700
training centers spread across 200 cities.

Prior to the UID project, Aptech has already undertaken several training
projects that required to train thousands of employees. Very recently, Aptech
has launched N-Power, a nineteen months program in remote infrastructure
management (RIM). Aptech also has a training program called Vidya in Hindi. If
empaneled, Aptech would look forward to strengthening its logistics network and
scale up its operations across the country considering the scale of the project.

Evaluation

It can be concluded that each player has its own strength and weak points.
When compared and pitted against each other, CMC, NIIT and HCL Infosystems
appear to be strong contenders for empanelment based on their hands-on
experiences with similar training projects. Dataquest would like to stick its
neck out and bet on CMC and NIIT becoming Aadhaars training partners.

Atreyee Datta

atreyeed@cybermedia.co.in