Digital India

Digital India: Marching Towards Dreams

Digital India and the people of India. It aims at ensuring the government services are made available to citizens electronically by reducing paperwork. The initiative also includes plan to connect rural areas with high-speed internet networks. Digital India has three core components. These include:

The creation of digital infrastructure
Delivering services digitally
Digital literacy.

The project is slated for completion by 2019. A two-way platform will be created where both the service providers and the consumers stand to benefit. The scheme will be monitored and controlled by the Digital India Advisory group which will be chaired by the Ministry of Communications and IT. It will be an inter-ministerial initiative where all ministries and departments shall offer their own services to the public Healthcare,Education, Judicial services etc. The Public-private-partnership model shall be adopted selectively. In addition, there are plans to restructure the National Informatics Centre. This project is one among the top priority projects of the Modi Administration.

The initiative is commendable and deserves full support of all stakeholders. However, the initiative also lacks many crucial components including lack of legal framework, absence of privacy and data protection laws, civil liberties abuse possibilities, lack of parliamentary oversight for e-surveillance in India, lack of intelligence related reforms in India, insecure Indian cyberspace, etc. These issues have to be managed first before introducing DI initiative in India. Digital India project is worth exploring and implementation despite its shortcomings that can be rectified before its implementation.

Challenges Before Digital India

The Government of India entity Bharat Broadband Network Limited which executes the National Optical Fibre Network project will be the custodian of Digital India (DI) project. BBNL had ordered United Telecoms Limited to connect 250,000 villages through GPON to ensure FTTH based broadband. This will provide the first basic setup to achieve towards DI and is expected to be completed by 2017.

The Digital India initiative is a promising initiative of the Indian Government. Many companies have shown their interest in this project. It is also believed that E-commerce would facilitate the DI project. However, it is not free from challenges and legal hurdles. Some believe that DI cannot be successful till mandatorybcb e-governance services in India are introduced. Having incomplete implementation of theNational e-Governance Plan of India will only affect the success of the DI project. India has poor regulations in the field of privacy protection, data protection, cyber law, telegraph, e-governance, e-commerce, etc. Further, many legal experts believe that e-governance and DI without cyber security is useless. The cyber security trends in India have exposed the vulnerability of Indian cyberspace. Even the National Cyber Security Policy 2013 has not been implemented till now. In these circumstances, Critical infrastructure protection would be a really tough task to manage for the Indian Government. The project also lacks the concept of proper E-waste management.

Fields of Improvement Under Digital India Programme

The programme comprises of various initiatives, each targeted to prepare India for becoming a knowledge economy and for bringing good governance to citizens through synchronized and co-ordinated engagement of the entire government.

The vision of Digital India programme also aims at inclusive growth in areas of electronic services, products, manufacturing and job opportunities etc. The vision of Digital India is centred on three key areas -

(i) Digital Infrastructure as a utility to every citizen

(ii) Governance & services on demand

(iii) Digital Empowerment of citizens

The Digital India programme aims to provide broadband highways, universal access to mobile connectivity, public internet access programme, e-governance: Reforming government through technology, eKranti - Electronic delivery of services, Information for all, Electronics manufacturing: Target net zero imports, IT for jobs and early harvest programmes.

In line with these objectives, the government has launched some inititaives. Others are being readied for launch. We take a look at some of them.

1. Digital Locker System aims to minimize the usage of physical documents and enable sharing of e-documents across agencies. The sharing of the e-documents will be done through registered repositories thereby ensuring the authenticity of the documents online, says the government.

2. MyGov.in has been implemented as 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.

3. Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) Mobile app would be used by people and Government organizations for achieving the goals of Swachh Bharat Mission.

4. eSign framework would allow citizens to digitally sign a document using Aadhar Authentication.

5. The Online Registration System (ORS) under the eHospital application has been introduced. This application provides important services such as online registration, payment of fees and appointment, online diagnostic reports, enquiring availability of blood online etc, the government claims.

6. National Scholarships Portal is said to be a 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.

7. DeitY has undertaken an initiative namely Digitize India Platform (DIP) for large scale digitization of records in the country that would facilitate efficient delivery of services to the citizens.

8. The Government of India has undertaken an initiative namely 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.

9. Policy initiatives have also been undertaken by DeitY in the e-Governance domain like e-Kranti Framework, Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India, Framework for Adoption of Open Source Software in e-Governance Systems, Policy on Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for Government of India, E-mail Policy of Government of India, Policy on Use of IT Resources of Government of India, Policy on Collaborative Application Development by Opening the Source Code of Government Applications, Application Development & Re-Engineering Guidelines for Cloud Ready Applications

10. BSNL has introduced Next Generation Network (NGN), 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.

11. BSNL has undertaken large scale deployment of Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the country. The user can latch on the BSNL Wi-Fi network through their mobile devices.

12. BPO Policy has been approved to create BPO centres in different North Eastern states and also in smaller / mofussil towns of other states.

13. Electronics Development Fund (EDF) Policy aims to promote Innovation, R&D, and Product Development and to create a resource pool of IP within the country to create a self-sustaining eco-system of Venture Funds.

14. National Centre for Flexible Electronics (NCFlexE) is an initiative of Government of India to promote research and innovation in the emerging area of Flexible Electronics.

15. Centre of Excellence on Internet on Things (IoT) is a joint initiative of Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), ERNET and NASSCOM.

"The estimated impact of Digital India by 2019 would be cross cutting, ranging from broadband connectivity in all Panchayats, Wi-fi in schools and universities and Public Wi-Fihotspots. The programme will generate huge number of IT, Telecom and Electronics jobs, both directly and indirectly. Success of this programme 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," the government claims.

Digital Marketing Programme

Digital India Week

At the launch ceremony of Digital India Week by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, top CEOs from India and abroad committed to invest Rs 4.5 lakh crore towards this initiative. The CEOs said the investments would be utilitized towards making smartphones and internet devices at an affordable price in India which would help generate jobs in India as well as reduce the cost of importing them from abroad. 9 Key points of Digital India Programme are as follow