What is the story about?
Times Now Digital speaks to Siddharth Sharma, Chief Information and Innovation Officer, Digi Yatra Foundation about Digi Yatra's expansion plans and the
AI impact on jobs. Given below is an excerpt of the exclusive interaction.
Q. What are Digi Yatra's expansion plans/new innovations at Digi Yatra?
A. So what's next, right? So everybody has been asking us. As we expand, as you rightly said, airport solutions. So as of now, it is only for domestic, right-so the most immediate one, which is keeping us busy and we are working towards it, is opening it up for the international travellers, right. So people who are Indian nationals who want to travel international, yes. So that is the other use case wherein we are enabling this by integrating it with the passport-based verifiable credential. We recently demonstrated that as well as in March at the Global Forum, and when we talk about international, there is a global interoperability which is required because at the core, at the heart, Digi Yatra is a digital identity solution. Wherein the way you carry your ID documents physically in your hands today and they are secure with you. Similarly, Digi Yatra is working towards converting each one of them digitally, which you can carry on your phones, right. So which is always with you. So that is what our vision is and that's what we are working towards. So international trials is what is on the cards. Most recently we have launched a driving license based credential as well with a commitment to give more options to the users to be able to use to take the journey to the airport as of now. You can enter the airport today via Aadhaar-based credential only. With this, you can do it with driving license as well is again an extension of our integration with DigiLocker, wherein the moment ID documents are available digitally, we will be able to open it for the customers to be able to use it in Digi Yatra as well.
Q. How do you think biometric data can remain protected and what steps is Digi Yatra taking for that?
A. So that's a favourite question. People relate Digi Yatra with the seamless experience and the ease of travel that has happened. So that's what we mostly relate with. However, there is an untold story which we are trying to tell whenever possible, wherever possible. Sakshi, for bringing this question up. So Digi Yatra from day one, I was very serious about this and the solution which we designed way back in 2022 when we launched since then, it's a solution without a database. So we have a zero storage on our cloud. Everything, whatever is there is always on the user's phone and it leaves your phone when you give the consent for every travel and it reaches the airport service and on the day of the travel, you use it for your journey. The moment your flight takes off within 24 hours of that, all the data is purged by the airport as well. You repeat the cycle every time. The moment you click a photograph, the first thought comes to your mind is my data is gone now everywhere in the cloud. They will share it with everyone. But that's not the case with Digi Yatra. Rest assured, it's always on your phone. This is called Privacy by Design. We take minimal data which is required for the use case. From Aadhaar, when we pull data, we don't pull up addresses etc of yours and all. It is only your name, Aadhaar number, gender, and date of birth, right-because that's what you need to be able to enter the airport. So data minimisation is at the core.
