Listing the three pillars of Digital India

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Digital India has been envisioned as an ambitious umbrella program to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.

It comprises various initiatives to prepare India for becoming a knowledge economy and bringing good governance to citizens through co-ordinated engagement with the government. All the existing and ongoing e-Governance initiatives have been revamped to align with the principles of Digital India.

We highlight the key pillars of the new initiative and also highlight the impacts.

The vision of Digital India is centered on three key areas:

Digital Infrastructure-as-a-Utility to Every Citizen

• High speed Internet as a core utility
• Cradle to grave digital identity
• Mobile phone and bank account enabling participation in digital and financial space
• Easy access to a common service centers (CSCs)
• Shareable private space on a public cloud
• Safe and secure Cyberspace

Governance and Services on Demand 

• Seamlessly integrated across departments or jurisdictions
• Services available in real time from onlineand bile platform
• All citizen entitlements to be available on the cloud
• Services digitally transformed for improving Ease of Doing Business
• Making financial transactions electronic and cashless
• Leveraging GIS for decision support systems & development

Digital Empowerment of Citizens

• Universal digital literacy
• Universally accessible digital resources
• All documents/ certificates to be available on cloud
• Availability of digital resources / services in Indian languages
• Collaborative digital platforms for participative governance
• Portability of all entitlements through cloud

We list some projects and products that have been launched or are ready to be launched.

Digital Locker: aims to minimize the usage of physical documents and enable sharing of e-documents across agencies.

• MyGov.in: a platform for citizen engagement in governance, through a Discuss, Do and Disseminate approach. The mobile App for MyGov would bring these features to users on a mobile phone.
• Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) mobile app: would be used by people and government organizations for achieving the goals of Swachh Bharat mission.
• eSign framework: would allow citizens to digitally sign a document online using Aadhaar authentication.
• The Online Registration System (ORS) under the eHospital application: provides important services such as online registration, payment of fees and appointment, online diagnostic reports, enquiring availability of blood online etc.
• National Scholarships Portal: one stop solution for end to end scholarship process right from submission of student application, verification, sanction and disbursal to end beneficiary for all the scholarships provided by the Government of India.
• Digitize India Platform (DIP): an initiative for large scale digitization of records in the country that would facilitate efficient delivery of services to the citizens.
• Bharat Net: a high speed digital highway to connect all 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats of country. This would be the world’s largest rural broadband connectivity project using optical fibre.
• BSNL Next Generation Network (NGN): introduced to replace 30 year old exchanges, which is an IP based technology to manage all types of services like voice, data, multimedia/ video and other types of packet switched communication services.
• Wi-Fi hotspots: The user can latch on the BSNL Wi-Fi network through their mobile devices.

The overall costs of Digital India is Rs 100,000 crore in ongoing schemes (only DeitY, DOT & not incl. those in other line Ministries) and Rs 13,000 crore for new schemes and activities

The success of this program will make India Digitally empowered and the leader in usage of IT in delivery of services related to various domains such as health, education, agriculture, banking, etc. and aims at inclusive growth in areas of electronic services, products, manufacturing and job opportunities, etc.

Impact of Digital India by 2019

• Broadband in 2.5 lakh villages, universal phone connectivity
• Net Zero Imports by 2020
• 400,000 Public Internet Access Points
• Wi-Fi in 2.5 lakh schools, all universities; Public Wi-Fi hotspots for citizens
• Digital Inclusion: 1.7 Cr trained for IT, Telecom and Electronics Jobs
• Job creation: Direct 1.7 Cr. and Indirect at least 8.5 Cr.
• e-Governance & e-Services: Across government
• India to be leader in IT use in services – health, education, banking
• Digitally empowered citizens – public cloud, Internet access.

We at CIOL, welcome the PM's Digital India initiative which will provide a much needed boost to the citizen services and benefit the common man at large. All the same, we would love to hear your views on the same.

What do you think about the Digital India initiative?