Here’s your problem. You have over 1 Billion people to identify (let’s call them Indians). How do you set up a system that gathers and tracks identity data? To add some fun, many of the folks can’t read or write, don’t know their birth date and lots of the laborers have worked so hard they’ve worn off their fingerprints.

The Economist recently reported that the Indian government has undertaken to positively identify and give a Social Security type number with biometric data to its 1.2B citizens. Since hundreds of millions lack documents, addresses or even surnames, the project seems even trickier. Of course, the successful completion of the project could greatly reduce corruption and improve the efficiency of financial transactions. The upside to getting this done and done right is huge.

The Indian government contracted this project in a creative manner. They chose three contractors to:

1. Interview a person and document the name and birth date (guessing at dates when necessary)
2. Get a face photo that also scans the iris
3. Take fingerprints (adding moisture to the hands of those hard working types)
4. Compare the gathered biometric info against the database and verify that the person isn’t a duplicate in the system.

The fascinating part of the contracting process involves which firm gets the most work. The firm that does the fastest and most accurate job gets 50% of the work, while the second best firm gets 30% and the worst firm gets 20%. This allocation gets reassessed often, so a firm can move up and obtain more work (and more rupees) by getting better.

Now think about how we typically award projects in construction contracting. Public bids go to the lowest cost bidder (regardless of their reputation or ability to get the job done well…other than requiring a bonding company to vouch for them). Private bids generally also focus on the lowest cost, though most of us limit our invited bid list.

I understand contracting for a building project isn’t the same as gathering biometric data, but I’m challenged to try to contract more creatively. I’m not sure where it goes, but I will contemplate how I can improve the contracting in my business. Do you have any ideas or thoughts you’d like to share?