#biometricid

As mentioned in several earlier posts, high hopes surround the potential of biometric identification systems to help fight corruption. Emerging evidence is encouraging, but it also points to biometrics as being one piece of the puzzle, rather than the overall solution in a box. Here another very interesting research piece that confirms this picture by analysing how the introduction of biometric identification systems played out in Ghana in 2012. As it turns out, the new biometric machines happened to mal-function much more frequently in places with less unannounced electoral monitors and the data also showed that it was these very places that also experienced higher incidences of election fraud. So no biometrically-enhanced integrity where conventional electoral monitoring is not provided.  

Few other corruption challenges are as directly linked to people's essential livelihoods as corruption that stymies public food distribution geared towards the poor. Can technology help stem the massive diversion of subsidized food that is estimated to leave more than half of the low-income recipients without their entitled ratios and at dire risk of food insecurity?

(cc IRRI)

A very interesting new qualitative case study on Kerala explores this question, looking at a state that has been at the vanguard of e-government in India and that directly targeted its sweeping computerization of the distribution system for subsidized food at curbing those leakages. So how does this play out?

The results are mixed for two main reasons: First, built-in monitoring mechanisms only target the point of sale to the end user and leave out what is a very complex supply chain where diversion is also taking place. Second, even the highly monitored retail sellers are under immense pressure to squeeze additional profits out of the system, since their business models have all but collapsed when far-reaching reforms to the food subsidy system sharply reduced the number of entitled customers. 

Even the current roll-out of biometric ID cards in India that is meant to become another key accountability pillar in this food subsidy system is not expected to address these two major shortcomings. This means pressures and opportunities for corruption will not go away, unless the system will be re-designed to also monitor the long supply chain involved and unless new viable business models can be identified for the retailers involved. 

Extremely interesting food for thought, although mostly presented as a field-research informed outlook into the future, while unfortunately no hard data on changes in actual scale and scope of related corruption and leakage is included, one of the cardinal problems of many studies in this field.

Great evidence in a new paper by Prahbat Bamwal who analysed data from more than 23 million fuel purchase transactions in India and found that biometric identification systems help curb fraud in the allocation of cooking oil subsidies. Yet, sadly also a compelling case study of how corrupt politics trumps sensible governance and related tech projects: the very success of the system may have ushered in its own demise and led to it being abolished by the politicians that it had deprived of some very lucrative and convenient patronage power.

Who would have imagined even a few months back that you could just call up an official website and track the office attendance of tens of thousands of civil servants equipped with biometric id cards across a huge developing countries - in real time(!)? 

A new fascinating large-scale study covering 19 million Indians finds robust evidence that the combination of these two technologies does indeed reduce some forms of corruption.

(image: cc By Kannanshanmugam,shanmugamstudio,Kollam )