Kerala embarks on new digital initiatives to achieve Vision 2020

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, INDIA: The state government in Kerala has now set in motion an ambitious policy framework that aims to bridge the digital divide by 2020 and make it the country’s first ‘digitally literate’ state.

The key objectives include transforming Kerala into a digital knowledge society to achieve sustainable economic growth, making accessible the digital infrastructure to all at affordable cost, attracting more investments and promoting the IT export of the state.

Another major objective of Vision 2020 is to ensure that the various e-services offered by the government are availed by the people and achieve social harmony and high quality of life for all, with inclusion of disadvantaged sections of society, said Minister for Industries and IT, P K Kunhalikutty.

“Vision 2020 has the potential to ensure willful participation of all sections of the society which, in turn, would prevent the less privileged from getting marginalized. It is also aimed at promoting entrepreneurship and generating more employment opportunities for the youth,” he pointed out.

P H Kurian, Principal Secretary, Industries and IT, Government of Kerala, said the four major pillars that contributed to the gradual evolution of Kerala into a truly digital society are Akshaya Project, IT@School project, digital infrastructure availability, and State Data Centre and allied applications.

“We have now taken our digital initiatives to a qualitatively higher level. Kerala has started e-Governance in ‘Cloud’ SDC (2), becoming the second cloud-enabled Data Centre in the country,” he pointed out.

The state government has also planned a slew of initiatives to achieve ‘Vision 2020’. These include Bharat Net Mobile Governance, which is a project of the Central government to establish, by 2017, a scalable network infrastructure to provide on demand, affordable broadband connectivity of 2 Mbps to 20 Mbps to all households and institutions.

Further, it plans to achieve ‘Mobile-Governance’ (M-Governance) through a single Mobile application covering a variety of government services.

The government also plans to make its offices paper-less in 2015-2016, which will increase efficiency and transparency in file movements.

Also, Wi-Fi hot spots are to be provided in government schools through availability of  high-speed Internet and Wi-Fi services. Those who live near schools can access Wi-Fi free.