The UID project facilitates this by enabling the opening of bank accounts as well as by providing an infrastructure for payments and remittances across this vast country.

ECONOMIST: Asia

Noelle Nelson, the acting chief executive of Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, which is backing the project, said the settlers' first-hand accounts at the State Library are "unrivalled".

BBC: Australian project hunts lost indigenous languages

The Committee on Public Accounts earlier threw fresh doubt on the 2015 deadline for the project.

BBC: Tories consider IT contract cap

Last week Karnataka state claimed that by paying welfare direct to bank accounts it had cut some 2m ghost labourers from a rural public-works project.

ECONOMIST: India��s UID scheme

At a point when relations between the news organizations and WikiLeaks were rocky, at least three people associated with this project had inexplicable activity in their e-mail that suggested someone was hacking into their accounts.

FORBES: NYTimes Editor: Reporters Covering WikiLeaks Had Email Hacked

Poindexter likens the seven-year process of tracking down vets, soliciting accounts of their battle memories, compiling paperwork and navigating Washington bureaucracies to a grand business project.

FORBES: Fighting A Two-Front War

The chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge, said it was a very small amount for such a large project.

BBC: London 2012 at risk of exceeding budget, watchdog warns

The London Stock Exchange, which says that algorithmic trading now accounts for about 40% of its total volume, is in the midst of a four-year project to develop such a platform by next year.

ECONOMIST: Technology and exchanges: Moving markets | The