Jul 19, 2017

While Supreme Court debates Aadhaar, UIDAI site fails to ship a MVP

BYSriram Sharma

While a significant hearing by a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court focussing on privacy issues related to Aadhaar is going on currently, the UIDAI website fails on delivering basic MVP (minimum viable product) level features, such as Aadhaar verification, e-Aaadhaar download, and an active Toll-Free number, FactorDaily has found.

The e-aadhaar feature experienced server timeouts as well on Wednesday.

Two FactorDaily employees made multiple attempts at  verifying their Aadhaar number on the UIDAI government website, only to see ‘connection-reset’ errors on Wednesday noon.
The facility to download an e-Aadhaar card, another feature of the UIDAI site also wasn’t functional, at the time of filing this story.
Calls to the toll-free number listed on UIDAI website (1947) did not work, with phone calls disconnecting after a single ring.
We also experienced slow response times on DigiLocker

Digilocker, a digital storage service operated by the Government of India also took login multiple attempts to work when logging in with an Aadhaar ID.
The email/mobile verification feature did work for us, though we did notice a number of grammar errors with the UX dialog boxes. (Congratulation!(sic) Verification Completes!(sic), Aadhaar Number XXX doesn’t Exists! (sic)) Auto-generated emails, sent from UIDAI during authentication link to a dead URL. 
Also ReadWhy do you need to climb up to the roof to get your ration in this village? Hint: Aadhaar
Many Aadhaar users have complained on Twitter of ‘Authentication Failed‘ messages coming from seemingly unauthorised sources, with no clarity on why this happens. We’ve reached out to UIDAI support for clarity on what’s the course of action in cases such as these.  
Also Read: Unable to verify fingerprints, leprosy patients denied ration in Haryana CM’s constituency
While the Supreme Court considers whether Aadhar violates the right of privacy, poorly coded and implemented features do hamper citizen confidence in the project.

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Sriram Sharma is a writer of FactorDaily.