Using the lens of “social construction of technology” to understand the design and implementation of aadhaar (UID) project

Abstract

Extant Research on e-government projects has shown that multiple stakeholders are at play always, each with their own divergent interests. And many a time, differences in stakeholder expectations from a project has resulted in projects failing or being abandoned after initial usage. Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) studies look at the development history of a technology in order to understand how that particular technology has evolved, based on the interpretations of various stakeholders involved. This short paper looks at the Aadhaar project (Unique Identification Project) of India through a constructivist lens and tries to present the current understanding of the Aadhaar project, as seen by the various stakeholders, using publicly available data.