Identification | Barcode Decrypts Digital Signature

India’s southern state Tamil Nadu issued barcode-powered income certificates in social welfare as a part of its e-governance initiatives. Shenzhen Chainway Information Technology Co. Ltd (Chainway), a manufacturer of handheld computers, supplied the barcode-enabled handheld computers in this project.

Citizens who wanted to enroll in the social welfare program needed to fill in an application first. If the application was approved, an Income Certificate would be issued to the applicant. Several signature authorizations are required on this official document. On the bottom of this certificate had a 2D barcode in which the digital signature was embedded. In order to access welfare, citizens would have to present their printed copies of the income certificates to the Social Welfare Department. 

The 2D barcode on the Income Certificate was embedded with electronic signatures of several required authorizations. A digital signature is not a handwritten signature which is scanned and digitally attached with a document; it is a combination of 0 & 1s created using crypto algorithms. Thus digital signatures provide authentication, integrity, and non-repudiation. 

Verifiers used Chainway handheld computers to decrypt the information and authenticate the document. The state-of-the-art 1D/2D barcode scanning engine instantly and accurately identified the digital signature embedded in the barcode with the one stored in the database of the government. If the signatures match, Chainway handheld device will display a successful verification message on the screen. If the match fails, the verifiers will see a warning message. Either result will be transmitted in real time under 3G network to the backend information system of the Government of Tamil Nadu. 

The proposal - to facilitate e-governance – was in line with the initiatives to crack down welfare fraud. A large part of government records including social welfare records had been digitized. It enabled the replacement of slow and expensive paper-based approval processes with fast, low-cost, and fully digital ones. Barcode and Chainway handheld computer with barcode capability are working together to fulfill these proposals. 
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