President A P J Abdul Kalam has a digital dream - a citizen casting his vote from a virtual polling booth in his house and an intelligence software projecting a candidate's success as a politician.
Sharing his dream during a lecture on Electronic Connectivity for a Billion People in New Delhi on Tuesday, Kalam said he visualised a scenario where the election officer verified the authenticity of a candidate from a national citizen ID database through a multi-factor authentication, soon after he filed his papers.
Addressing the 28th General Assembly of International Union of Radio Science, Kalam said in such a scenario the election official, who is entitled to scrutinise the nomination papers, would get information from a variety of sources at a mouse click.
"The candidates' education credentials would come from the university records. His track record of employment from various employers while his income sources would be provided by the income-tax department and his citizenship behaviour would be known from the police crime records," he said.
"His legal track record could be procured from the judicial system," the President said.
"All the details arrive at the computer terminal of the election officer within few seconds automatically by the act of e-governance software agents which crawl across various state and central government web services directories and collect the information automatically and present the facts in real-time without any bias," Kalam said, outlining his dream.
With efficient use of technology, Kalam said, the official sitting at the remotest block of the country would make an on-the-spot decision and initiate the election process.
"All the electors could vote from their homes through virtual polling booths," he said.
In another of his dream project, Kalam envisages an artificial intelligence software which analyses a candidate's credentials and project how successful he would be as a politician.
Serious thought should be given to see whether this can be done by e-governance at an affordable cost to the country.
"If we have this system implemented then I can call this a true e-governance system for the citizen," the President said.