GHMC adopts AI facial recognition for staff attendance management

Hyderabad : The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, which replaced the previous Aadhaar biometric attendance system to an artificial intelligence-driven mobile-based facial recognition on a pilot basis to manage attendance of its sanitation staff, has turned cost-effective. It is saving around Rs 1.25 crore every year.

According to GHMC officials, the pilot project was taken up with the sanitation staff in Karwan. This system is being used across sanitation, entomology and veterinary wings. They say the yearly expenditure on facial recognition systems is Rs 67.08 lakh. It was Rs 1.92 crore with the Aadhar biometric.

The facial recognition attendance system was introduced in GHMC to put in place an efficient fool-proof, cost-effective attendance mechanism to replace the previous Aadhaar biometric attendance system.

A GHMC release said the officers concerned faced certain field-level challenges including unsuccessful authentication to staff with faded out fingerprints, and the device sensors validating the silicon fingerprint authentications at times. Network issues led to incomplete attendance at times.

Upon the introduction of the facial recognition attendance system the dependence of data network and additional devices associated with the previous attendance system is eliminated further, removing the scope of annual attendance to staff with fingerprint fading leading to attendance with 100% accuracy and tamper proof.

Based on the feedback and inputs received from the Khairatabad zonal commissioner on the pilot project the facial recognition attendance system is on in the whole GHMC.

The application uses AI and verifies the changes in the facial features with liveness detection.

The facial recognition attendance system is a fool-proof system with a two-step registration process by first capturing the face of the staff, followed by Aadhaar card, and approval of the registration by the officers concerned only after which attendance can be captured. The registrations made can be viewed any time in the officer’s logins.