9- The Practice of Digital India - Policy Foundations

Digital India - Policy Foundations

The India Government has taken several policy initiatives in the e-Governance domain that are crucial for achieving the vision and objectives of the Digital India programme. Effective implementation of e-Governance is a key component of the out the road-map for implementation of e-Governance projects in the Digital India programme. These policy initiatives are an endeavor to chart out the road-map the implementation of Digital India project in the country. They cover a number of important areas

• “The e-Kranti Framework” policy provides the eKranti framework that is an integral part of the Digital India programme. With the vision of “Transforming e-Governance for Transforming Governance”, e-Kranti programme aims towards easy governance, effective governance, good governance and mobile governance. It provides the key principles for revamping the existing projects and also for new and ongoing e-Governance projects.
• The “Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India” encourages the formal adoption and use of Open Source Software (OSS) in Government organizations. The compliance to this policy will ensure that strategic control of e-Governance assets would remain with the Government and would also ensure business continuity for the projects in future from technical perspective.
• The “Framework for Adoption of Open Source Software in eGovernance Systems” suggests a set of recommendations and procedures for promoting, managing and enhancing the adoption of OSS in e-Governance Systems in India. It highlights the impact of adoption of OSS in Government, influencing factors, mutual impact of Open Standards and OSS, establishing enterprise security with OSS, unified software development for all major devices using standards based web browser and use of localisation. The Framework suggests neutral guidelines to select software and the process for induction of OSS solution. The ecosystem suggested to promote the adoption of OSS describes required institutional mechanism, collaboration with key stakeholders like industry, OSS communities, academia, collaborative mechanism, offering of services based on OSS, provisioning of support services on OSS and integration with on-going initiatives.
• The “Policy on Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for Government of India” sets out the Government’s approach on the use of “Open APIs” to promote software interoperability for all eGovernance applications & systems and provide access to data & services for promoting participation of all stakeholders including citizens. This policy initiative will encourage the formal use of Open APIs in Government organizations. The world-wide initiatives on “Open Government” also focus on open APIs to easily access the information collected by Government organizations.
• The “E-mail Policy of Government of India” lays down the guidelines with respect to use of e-mail services by the Government departments and organizations. The policy initiative aims to ensure secure access and usage of Government of India e-mail services by its users and is applicable to all employees of Government of India (GoI) and employees of those State/UT Governments that use the e-mail services of GoI.
• The “Policy on Use of IT Resources of Government of India” provides the guidelines to ensure proper access to and usage of Government’s IT resources and prevent their misuse by the users. The policy initiative covers all IT resources including desktop devices, portable and mobile devices, networks including wireless networks, Internet connectivity, external storage devices and peripherals like printers and scanners and the software associated therewith.
• The “Policy on Collaborative Application Development by Opening the Source Code of Government Applications” intends to increase the pace of e-Governance application development and rapid roll out/implementation by adopting an open-source based development model. The Government of India wants to promote re-use of existing developed applications. By opening the source code, the Government wants successful, scalable, high quality e-governance applications to be developed in a collaborative manner. It also wants new applications to be developed to encourage creativity both inside and outside the Government by encouraging collaborative development between Government departments/agencies and private organizations, citizens and developers to create innovative e-Governance applications and solutions.
• The “Application Development & Re-Engineering Guidelines for Cloud Ready Applications” aims to address one of the major concerns in the e-Governance domain that is lack of process re-engineering and leveraging of the latest emerging technology i.e. Cloud. This guideline intends to ensure development of Common Application Software (CAS) which can be configured as per different States / departments requirements without the need of modifying the core code of the application for a faster deployment so that time, effort and cost in developing applications are saved and to avoid duplication of efforts. It is therefore imperative that applications are developed in conformity to guidelines that makes them standardized and compatible for hosting and running across states.

8- The Practice of Digital India- Digital India Defined

Digital India defined

Digital India is a campaign launched by the Government of India to ensure that Government services are made available to citizens electronically by improving online infrastructure and by increasing Internet connectivity or by making the country digitally empowered in the field of technology.

It was launched on 2 July 2015. The initiative includes plans to connect rural areas with high-speed internet networks. Digital India consists of three core components. These include:

• The creation of digital infrastructure
• Delivery of services digitally
• Digital literacy

7- Practice of Digital India- Power of Digital Technology

Power of Digital Technology

Digital technology has one distinct quality.  It is not constrained by time and physical space. For example suppose you want to write a letter to some say your parents in a physical world - then you need paper and ink. When you complete your letter you need to walk to nearby post box and post it. It takes some days before it reaches your father. In case you are writing a letter to many people, all the steps needs to repeated for each one of them. It takes time, paper , ink and effort.  All this happens because it is physical in nature

Now come to digital world. You can compose and send an email in few minutes. And reaches the recipient within no time. This is an illustration of eliminating the time and space constraint of physical world by digital world.  This is applicable to many things we did in the past. In the past we use to send money through postal money order. It used to take days. Now with UPI mode, money gets transferred instantly. This is because mode of transmission is digital

The digital India projects intends to use this new property of digital technology to build a New India where everyone is connected and everything is delivered electronically.

Digital Technologies such as Cloud computing and mobile applications have emerged as catalyst for rapid economic growth and citizen empowerment across the globe. Digital Technologies are being increasingly used by us in everyday lives , from retail stores to government offices. They help us connect with each other and also share information on issues and concerns relevant to us. In some cases they also enable resolution of those issues in near real time. Digital India intends to use these in empowering citizens.

Since Digital technologies overcome traditional barriers of time and space, Digital India will bridge the long standing differences between digital have's and have not's to ensure that government services reach every household in order to create a long-lasting development impact. Digital technologies also bring in greater thrust t promote inclusive growth that covers electronic services, products, devices and job opportunities. It will also facilitate an an enabling environment for electronic manufacturing on a much larger scale to match the growing needs of the nation.

6- The Practice of Digital India- Overview of Digital India Programme

Overview of Digital India Programme

Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity:

This initiative aims to ensure mobile connectivity in all parts of the country by 2018. The objective is to provide each citizen of the country with access to mobile networks and associated services. There are a number of services offered by different departments of Government and other basic services such as banking, insurance etc where the mobile number of the resident acts as the authentication for ensuring reliability of services. Hence access to mobile network is essential and there mobile connectivity is  being established.   

Public Internet access program

This program aims to improve connectivity within the country.  It intend to build common service centers ( CSC) in each gram panchayat and also converting post offices into multi service centers. The CSCs would provide citizens with centers from where they can access to multiple services like utility bill payments, exam records, land records etc. Post offices will be converted into multi-service centers to provide not only postal services but also financial services such as savings and insurance  

Broadband highways

Is a program building internet connectivity across the country. It is the essential and first step towards building digital India services. All that services that will be available as part of Digital India would require good connectivity across the country. Broadband highways is the basic connectivity to all citizens. This initiative focuses on establishing connectivity all over the country. As part of the initiative, 250,000 gram panchayats are planned to be covered under National Optical Fibre Network ( NOFN) by December 2016.  Another initiative is the building of National Information Infrastructure (NII) which will provide high speed internet connectivity to government departments by accessing the network and cloud infrastructure in India.

E-kranti

Is the most crucial initiative of Digital India. It provides services such as e-health, technology for justice, e-education etc. e-healthcare would cover online medical consultation, online medical records, online medicine supply, pan-India exchange for patient information Medical records of patients including multimedia data like CT scans, X-rays, and MRIs will be stored and accessed from a single point of access

E-education

Is  the project that aims at developing massive open online courses ( MOOC) that can be leveraged for education and provide citizens access to huge amounts of knowledge along with a forum for students and teachers to debate, discuss and form meaningful conversations

E-governance  aims at making the best use of growing technology to provide services like banking, civil services, postal services and more to every citizen of the country, irrespective of their location. It is not commercially feasible to open physical branches of banks and full government services everywhere in India, because India is a very widespread country. Hence to provide equal services to all citizens of the country, e-governance is planned to be implemented. e-Governance is one of the nine pillars of Digital India. It uses pervasive nature of IT as a platform and government intends to reach every far corner of the country and provide services like voter id, Aadhaar number, integration of services and more.

Information for all

This initiative is aimed at making the documents imperishable, pervasive and immune to theft and loss, while assuring the authenticity of the documents

Early harvest programs

This is the initiative that contains multiple services like national portal for lost and found children ( KhoyaPaya) , biometric scanners in all government offices, mass messaging app for government employees. A messaging App will be created for elected representatives and government employees, with the intent create a forum for discussion, generate a fast response and share ideas through a two way communication between representatives and employees

IT for Jobs- plans to train students from various villages, small towns Tier II and III cities so that they become competent enough to take up IT jobs in the next 5 years

5- The Practice of Digital India- Vision of Digital India

Vision of Digital India

Digital Infrastructure as a utility to every citizen: Infrastructure is essential for existence and success. When infrastructure is not available, it makes life very hard. For instance, if a village or town is not connected by road or railway or if the roads are poorly built, then travelling from that village of nearby city takes more effort, consumes more time and make people less productive. Secondly lack of basic infrastructure impedes economic activities and hence progress. Businesses are discouraged to invest money and set up new ventures when an area of village lacks basic infrastructure. One of the reasons for uneven development of India is essentially due to unevenly developed infrastructure. The digital India project addresses this issue head-on. Realising the importance digital infrastructure for individual and institutional connectivity and hence productivity, the project is making all efforts to provide Digital Infrastructure as a utility to every citizen. What it means is- a robust internet  connectivity will be provided reaching out to every village in the country and there by for every citizen. Every citizen will be on the Internet

Governance and Services on demand:

On demand service is the defacto standard for most of business service delivery today. People are getting used to online shopping and on-demand services. Now the Indian government wishes to offer all its citizen services in online  and on-demand. Currently availing any government service means the concerned person personally going to office and getting it done. It is labour intensive, paper-based and often time consuming.  With Digital India all that will be the thing of the past. Using online services or even apps downloaded from government websites citizen can obtain information, get certificates and services delivered electronically

Digital empowerment of citizens

In order to use online services, the citizen need to be trained and made comfortable with digital environments and its artifacts. The Indian government is taking up a massive  digital literacy initiative

4- The Practice of Digital India- The Role of Digital India

The Role of Digital India

Digital India is most dynamic force that is shaping the present and future of India and its population.  It is setting up processes and technologies in place for inclusive growth of every citizen. No project to in Indian history was so deep in dream and so real in deed. Not that earlier India did not take up projects or initiative to help its citizens.  In fact numerous irrigation projects, power generation projects, road construction or building railway lines have been taken in past.  
But all those projects reflect the that nature of technologies available at the time of taking up those projects. Most of the projects were physical in nature.  For that reason they were constrained in terms of resources, reach, locality and benefits gained. For example even the biggest irrigation project irrigated lands that looked very large in absolute numbers, but were very small compared to the total area of the country to be irrigated,  thousands of miles roads and railway lines were built , still many parts of country were not connected well. Many branches  of banks , hospitals, bus stops and numerous infrastructure  facilities were built over the years. However citizens were under- served in basic facilities because India was never capable of building infrastructure for such a huge country with limited resources.  Added to this was the exponential population  growth which made even available infrastructure look meager and population was always undeserved.  Catching up with growing infrastructure demands and meeting  them physically was not at all possible.  

Now times have changed.  New technologies have come. They have changed the nature of problems and have offered new kind of solutions. For instance the Indian government was never able to produce enough telephones to provide them to every demanding citizen. However  mobile phones based on digital technologies have made it possible for most Indian to own a phone. This is an illustration of the power of digital technology offering great a new, cost-effective solution that is affordable by most Indians.

Digital India is all about putting digital infrastructure to serve every citizen.  It ensures that all citizen services are delivered electronically and every nook and corner of the country is connected through robust Internet.  The resulting digital India will become a new platform for government to offer services efficiently.

3. The Practice of Digital India- The Purpose and Target Audience

PREFACE

The Purpose and Target Audience

This book (accompanying videos)   intends  to put the digital India resources at the center of every Indian’s  working and personal day today life and transform her into a empowered digital citizen. Digital India projects are  built for and meant for every Indian. It is very inclusive in its objectives and services, every Indian will be affected by it and more importantly benefited by that. Making every Digital citizen , the largest group of people in India aware of these resources and guide  them towards  harnessing their potential is the first and foremost objective of this book,

The second important audience of this book is Digital Worker. Digital workers constitute the second largest growing group in India.  These are people  who use digital India infrastructure and resources within the context of their work and professions. They may be teachers, office workers, business executives who come across situations where digital India can play a key role and contribute towards their accomplishments and success.

The third intended audience of the book is Digital shapers. These are the Indians who are playing leading roles within their groups and communities.  They have within them power to use digital India to enhance performance of their own and that of their teams and  shape  new collect future. These digital shapers can be institutional leaders, communities  leaders , functionaries in local government , people's representatives and more.

The next important target audience of this book is the Digital developer. Software applications or simply apps have become the de facto means of building and offering services to both business customers and citizens. In fact today Indian government has offering many of its services through apps.  The futuristic Indian government not only  want to use digital India platform for offering its citizens services. Instead it is opening its platform along with incredible number of software  resources for developers to build and offer innovative services. The digital India platform often technically called IndiaStack  is a set of  layered resources for developers to build and offer innovative apps to billion Indians. For Indian developers this is a dream come true and an emerging market in their own home country.

Another important audience intended by the book is Digital innovators. These are the small, but significant and rapidly emerging digital Indians who have deep dreams and tall talent to look at digital India infrastructure and come out with innovative product, services and business models. These solutions could be india-specific to be targeted at a section of Indian society say rural or urban. These services  can be for meeting specific in-transition population  - say people who earn and spend all money in cash. The innovator solution can also be with global focus but may start in India and use Digital india as a test bed.

Another important target audience is Digital leaders whose operative mandate is at state , regional levels. These are people who might carry the baton of national process further into future.  Leaders who are in their mid career stages  and are expected to take India to new but unknown future .

An added audience is the teachers and parents teachers  who might use this book and illustrations while teaching to inspire students. Parents can use this book to keep themselves updated about new and emerging Digital India. Another important interested audience of this book is NRIs. They may be interested in knowing the technological developments back in home and would be surprised at the speed of developments  and sophistication of the resulting infrastructure and  their resourcefulness

Last but not least is the social entrepreneurs and change agents who might be interested in seeing how Digital India adds a new dimension and resource pool for them in engaging their audiences, enlarging their base of operations and enriching their stakeholders.

2- The Practice of Digital India - Story of Eko: Aadhaar enabled Remittance Services

1. The Practice of Digital India: New Challenge

Today in India we have available enough infrastructure, knowledge, exposure and experience needed for the successful practice of digital India.. However the percentage of people who are aware of these resources and applying them in their daily life for professional and personal purposes is very small compared to rest of the population.

Let me give you an example.   As part of digital India citizen services suite  the Indian government has made available a world class secure digital storage service called Digilocker. Digilocker is open and available to every Indian resident.  Residents can store and share documents securely. However the the number of Indian residents who have created accounts on digilocker and using it on regular basis is very small. In my opinion  every college going student in India  should have created account by now and has been using it actively. This needs immediate attention and action

Story of Digio: Aadhaar enabled paperless documentation