A project initiated by General Administration Department
Government of Kerala
Technical Document
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Government of India
Ministry ofElectronics& Information Technology
Department of Information Technology
National Informatics Centre
Kerala State Centre, Trivandrum-33
Background
Government of Kerala initiated the biometric enabled attendance system in
Government Secretariat, Thiruvananthapuramsome time back with technical
assistance from a state Government PSU. Later on for effective monitoring of
attendance, it was decided to link it with SPARK, the HR portal of the Government. As
the HR portal was designed and developed by NIC Kerala, NIC was asked to do the
needful for integrating the attendance system with SPARK database and to facilitate
necessary modules for effective monitoring of attendance. Necessary APIs were
exposed in SPARK for pushing the punching data. On the successful implementation of
the same in Government Secretariat, it was decided to implement the biometric
attendance system in all state Government establishments. Government constituted a
technical committee vide G.O(Rt)No.8153/2018/GAD dated 17-12-2018 and NIC was a
member in the committee. Based on the inputs of NIC in the committee meeting
regarding AEBAS and MoM of the meeting held on 08.03.2019, NIC was asked to
submit a detailed proposal for implementation of AEBAS for Government of Kerala.
About Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System
(AEBAS)
As part of the “Digital India” Programme of Government of India, it has been decided
to implement commonAadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) in the
Central Government Offices (Agencies). Later it extended to the State Governments
with separate domains for each state. The proposed system would enable an
employee to register attendance by presenting his/her biometric (finger print/Iris)
which will be authenticated online by doing one to one match with the bio-metric
stored in the UIDAI data base against the employee’s Aadhaar number.
The Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) has the following
features:
Cloud-based attendance software installed and operated from NIC National Data
Centre.
Dedicated secure high speed connectivity provided between National Data
Center and UIDAI Data Center by NIC for authentication
Offices using the system will procure and install biometric enabled terminals /
devices in decentralized manner through open tender/GeMto mark attendance;
the number and location of required devices will be assessed by the offices; the
offices concerned will be responsible for day-to-day maintenance of the devices
Network Connectivity of terminals / devices to be established through Wi-
Fi/GPRS
Customized reporting formats for various levels of employees developed by
UIDAI/NIC
Facility for centralized compilation and publication of attendance data in public
domain provided as per requirements
This Biometric Attendance System is based on Aadhaar Authentication
(Fingerprint and Iris Based Authentication).
It is an attendance system with real time monitoring
Time taken to Record Attendance is as low as 1-2 Seconds on Wi-Fi and 8-11
Seconds on GPRS (SIM)
System is tightly integrated with the communication channel of SMS. A user
gets SMS’s from the systems at various levels like after registration, on non-
marking of attendance and other conditions to empower the users of the
system.
The system maintenance is largely automated. Examples are: centralized
monitoring of devices – through a dash-board, push-based updating of software
on devices and PCs over the air, automatic fall back on SIM based connectivity
once the Wi-Fi connectivity goes down and centralized scheduling of shut-down
of devices during out of office hours. The efforts are on to make the system
even smarter in future.
Features of the System
Hardware: The system in simple to deploy due to no hardware lock in or vendor
dependency. The hardware used for this system is neither specially manufactured nor
is based on a technology patented by a particular company. This means that this
system can be installed on any tablet working on android operating system or any
desktop personnel computer or even a laptop working on windows [Link]
system requires one STQC certified Fingerprint/Iris Scanner Device that follows the
specifications of the UIDAI has to be attached to the host device.
Software: The client software for the biometric attendance systemhas been made in
house and is readily available. There are two separate versions of software available
for desktop PCs running windows and android based tablets. All the supported
biometric devices are integrated into the application. The software is a simple client
application with no special algorithms. Modification and incorporation of additional
features in the software is easy.
Connectivity: The system uses multiple internet connectivity channels and has an
inbuilt fallback mechanism. The biometric device works on any available connectivity
that is supported by the device on which the application is installed. The Tablet
application uses Wi-Fi as well as GPRS with an auto switch mechanism to determine
the best connectivity option. The desktop application can be used over Wi-Fi, Ethernet
or Data Card connectivity option and Android tablet application can be used over Wi-
Fi, GPRS/WCDMA , Ethernet options.
Accessibility for the employee: In order to make this system portable, it has been
designed on a central architecture. Every client system is connected to the server in
real time, the employee data resides on the central server and the changes are also
made in the database of the central server for any transaction at any client at any
location. This means that employees are not restricted to mark attendance from a
designated client or a location. There is a strong client management and analysis
system inbuilt which is capable of analyzing the transaction data of the clients for any
anomalies.
Scalability: The system has been built with scalability in mind. Therefore any new
office, employee or client can be on-boarded easily. The system can support
practically unlimited number of clients.
Security: There is a proper mechanism of registration of any new client or any piece
of hardware in the system before allowing it to be active to ensure safety of the
system. Aadhaar authentication is highly secure system of biometric authentication,
which adds to the security of the system. As the system uses this service, the
sensitive biometric data resides in the secure Central Identities Data Repository of
UIDAI. The biometric data captured locally by client is securely communicated to the
UIDAI server for authentication and not stored in the system at any point of time.
Ease of Use: This is an extremely user friendly system where the employees can
do online self-registration, update of their profile and details. The registered
employees also get SMS Alerts on events of importance. This system can also monitor
the health of attendance terminals centrally which makes is easier for the
implementers to do maintenance work.
The BAS manual is available at
[Link]
Objective
The objective is to implement AEBAS in the establishments of the Kerala state
Government integratedwith the HR application (SPARK) of the state Government.
On-boarding guidelines for Government of Kerala
Portal [Link] been created and around Forty (40)
departments have already on boarded on the portal. The screenshots of the portal
given in Appendix B.
The guidelines for on-boardingare given below:
Identification of Nodal Officer
To facilitate the implementation and thereafter operate the Biometric attendance
system, it is desired that the Ministry/Department shall nominate a Nodal Officer as a
Single Point of Contact (SPoC) for driving the Bio-metric attendance initiative.
It is recommended that Government of Kerala may identify nodal officer department
wise or district wise for effective [Link] user manual for nodal officer
available on the link [Link]
Registration of Organization
Government of Kerala (Directorates/departments) may fill up the Organization
registration form for capturing the details of the organization as well as Nodal
Officer towards registration/on-boarding to the state attendance portal. Once the
registration of the organization is complete, the organization will be listed in the portal
for the enrolment of the employees and generation of various types of reports
pertaining to the organization. Step towards Organization registration is available in
the link [Link]
The NIC coordinator can be the NIC Officer working on projects for that particular
department. Government of Kerala can have domains department wise on the
[Link] portal and all the Kerala departments will have prefix
“kl”. Please find examples of department’sonboardedin the following table
Department of Dairy Development, [Link]
Thiruvananthapuram [Link]
Department of Legal Metrology [Link]
n
Land Revenue Department, [Link]
Thiruvananthapuram .in
Directorate of Culture [Link]
[Link]
Department of Museums and Zoos [Link]
[Link]
Directorate of Agriculture Development and [Link]
Farmers Welfare Department [Link]
Registration of Employees
Once the domain of the organization is registered on the attendance portal,
employees of the organization are required to do online registration on
[Link] portal where xyz is the department name for enabling
them to mark attendance. The employees need to fill an online form using the link
‘User Registration’ on the attendance portal. Once the details are filled, the employee
data goes to the quality check team - Nodal Officer of the organization for verification.
After the approval from the nodal officer, the employee becomes active in the
attendance portal and can mark its attendance through the devices installed.
The details required for on boarding of employees in the attendance portal can be
found in Appendix ‘A’. The user manual for employees are available at
[Link]
Biometric Terminals (Devices)
The biometric terminals installed for the purpose of attendance punching act as an
interface for the end user to punch his attendance in the system, which in turn
interacts with various API’s to record the event in the central database.
The Biometric terminals may typically use the following components:
List of compatible devices is listed is available at
[Link]
a. Tablet –The wall mounted devices are Android OS running tablets, with either finger
print reader or iris scanner together housed in a cabinet to present an integrated
device feel. The BAS software for android is readily available for download from the
portal. Since network connectivity is mandatory for working these tablet devices are
connected through Wi-Fi access points and are also equipped with a 2G sim card for
GPRS connectivity for network failover support. Now tablets are available with
Ethernet LAN ports also. To get an idea of the indicative price, the approximate price
of the tablet as per GeM portal is Rs. 10,000. In offices having upto 50 employees, one
tablet is required.
b. Desktop – PC or laptops running Windows 10and above can also be used to run the
BAS software.
c. Fingerprint reader – these refer to the biometric fingerprint reader devices which
capture the fingerprints of the user. Approximate price
d. Iris scanner – these are used to capture the IRIS image of the user and do iris
authentication
The biometric terminals can be setup using either of the above combinations. For
other devices not listed in Appendix D, the AEBAS system requires STQC certified
fingerprint/IRIS scanner device that should be registered device as per the procedure
mentioned on UIDAI site [Link]
documents/[Link].
Once, the registration of the employees and verification by nodal officer is complete,
the employee can mark his/her attendance from the devices installed.
Customized reports for attendance monitoring
Various reports such as attendance register, Advance Report, Date wise Attendance
and Weakly/Monthly reports can be generated by the nodal officer.
1. Attendance Register:To get Attendance Register report between the date range.
2. Advance Report: To generate the advance report and Export the data into Excel
format.
3. Date wise Attendance Report: To get the date wise report and Export the data
into excel.
4. Weakly/Monthly Report: To generate the weakly/monthly report and data into
excel
The following are the mandatory requirements and major concerns for implementation
of AEBAS for Government of Kerala:
a. Aadhaar number for the employee is mandatory
b. Mobile number should be registered with the Aadhaar number
c. Only STQC certified UIDAI registered devices can be used
d. Finger print scanners compatible with WINDOWS and tablets support
Android. Few devices compatible with embedded LINUX.
e. Night shift duty is not provisioned in AEBAS as on date.
f. Network connectivity and access to NIC Cloud is a mandatory
requirement for marking attendance. If the network fails, employee will
not be able to mark attendance.
Integration with SPARK
AEBAS provides necessary APIs for pulling attendance data. Using these APIs,
punching data can be pulled and stored in SPARK. While on-boarding the employees
in to the AEBAS system, the field ‘organisational employee code’ may be entered
carefully. Organizational employee code refer to the Permanent Employee Number
(PEN) used in SPARK. As this attribute is optional in theAEBAS portal, sufficient care
should be taken to ensure that all employees update their PEN in the system. This can
be verified before formally starting the attendance monitoring.
SPARK has provision for online monitoring of attendance and has necessary reports
built in to the portal.
On boarding biometric attendance system in SPARK
The attendance data need to be pulled from AEBAS system or any other BAS system
(like the one implemented in Secretariat by Keltron) for attendance monitoring
purposes. To enable data pulling in to SPARK, the nodal officer should onboard the BAS
in SPARK using the below interface.
Menu: Service Matters -> Attendance ->Onboard BAS Enabled
Department/Office.
Select the onarded offices based on the departmant and district.
Select the BAS type then update details ( Date, Time, Lunch brak an Grace Time etc.. )
After that click ‘Update Details’ Button.
Project Monitoring Unit & Help desk
There are about 5 lakhs employees in 30,000+ establishments across 100+ line
departments falling under 41 Administrative departments in Government of Kerala.
Implementing AEBAS in such a large number of offices is really a challenging task. The
nodal officers and other employees may have several issues / doubts and all such
issues need to be clarified and way out suggested and helped out during the
implementation period. It is suggested that Government may augment the existing
SPARK PMU under Finance Department with sufficient man power and other resources
to address this. The man power deployed in the help desk can be trained along with
the departmental master trainers.
Cost
As on date the AEBAS isprovided, free of cost topure Government departments (non
profit making). However, in case of any future policy decision by the Ministry to
charge Government departments, the charges will be levied accordingly.
PSU’s, missions, boards, Institutes, Colleges, Local bodies, Skill development centres
are chargeable through NICSI. Current charges areRs. 3.21 per registered employee
per month with the minimum limit of Rs. 10,700 per year excluding GST. The actual
amount and account details will be mentionedin the Proforma Invoice (PI) from NICSI.
Any changes in the charges are liable to be paid.
Roles and Responsibilities
NIC
1. NIC will train identified nodal officers and master trainers of the departments in
on-boarding process and in using the AEBAS system. However the logistics for
the training need to be arranged by the department.
2. Any onboarding issues may be escalated to PMU/helpdesk who in turn will try to
resolve and escalate to NIC if not resolved.
3. NIC will make available the solution in central server and facility to download
the solution for desktops / tablets.
4. NIC will not be responsible for procurement and installation of devices,
connectivity or any other infrastructure items.
Departments / Offices/Government of Kerala
1. Define and identify the organizational units for AEBAS implementation
2. Designate nodal officers in the identified organizational units
3. Identify master trainers (at least 2 in each department)
4. Master trainers in turn to train other employees as required
5. Government of Kerala may establish a PMU and helpdesk with necessary
infrastructure.
6. Nodal officers will be responsible for on-boarding the employees and to help the
administration in monitoring of attendance.
For more details, please visit
[Link] FAQ Section
Appendix A
Details to be entered for Employee On-boarding
Instructions for filling the Employee On-boarding request form:
1. Kindly fill the entries as mentioned in the aadhaar card.
2. Upload your recent scanned/digital picture in ".jpg" format of max file size 100
KB.
3. Please review the form before submission.
Note:
If any of the pre-requisite information is not available in the form (select options
only), please get in touch with the concerned officer in your department to get
the details updated.
Please ensure that you have filled the form with correct information and have
uploaded a recent photograph, as the information submitted will check for
correctness and quality. Incorrect data will be rejected and will require re-
registration.
For any other assistance please get in touch with the Helpdesk at 1800 111 555
(Toll free no.).
Note:
a. If any of the pre-requisite information is not available in the form (select options only), please get
in touch with the concerned officer in your department to get the details updated.
b. Please ensure that you have filled the form with correct information and have uploaded a recent
photograph, as the information submitted will check for correctness and quality. Incorrect data will
be rejected and will require re-registration.
c. For any other assistance please get in touch with the Attendance Helpdesk through
[Link]
Appendix B
Important links
Organization [Link]
registration
BAS manual [Link]
Nodal Officer Manual [Link]
[Link]
Employee user manual [Link]
_v1.pdf
Device installation [Link]
procedure [Link]
General Queries [Link]
BAS compatible devices [Link]
