Digital India Unbound

             Previous                               The Practice of  Digital India                     Next 

Digital India Unbound

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 having Aadhaar number or mobile.  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

Figure 1: Digilocker users as on 3rd April, 2017

From upcoming book : The Practice of Digital India

x

Readying Government for Digital India Service Delivery

Digital India Citizen Services: Digilocker

Digital India Citizen Services: Digilocker

Digital India Citizen Services: Digilocker

6. Digital India Citizen Services: An Overview of Digilocker

Digilocker, as the name suggests, is the digital locker is launched by the Government of India. It is a dedicated personal space linked to each resident’s Aadhaar Digilocker  is a cloud storage and is one step forward towards the Digital India dream. One might wonder, as we we already have cloud storage  services like Google Drive or Dropbox, then why do we need  one more such service. The answer is very simple and straightforward. Digilocker is a cloud storage service to avail Government services, which can used for personal storage also by residents

• Digilocker account is linked to resident’s Aadhaar number
• Used to securely  store e-documents as well as store Uniform Resource identifier (URI) link of e-document issued by various issuer departments
• The e-sign facility provided as part of Digilocker system can be used to digitally sign e-documents

How digilocker is helps citizens

• (1) Minimize use of physical documents (2) provides authenticity of the e-document (3) provide secure access to government provided documents (4) will reduce administartive overhead of government departments and agencies and (5) make it easy for residents to avail citizen services

5. Overview of Digital India : Citizen Services

With (1) National Information Infrastructure (NII)  in place, (2)  Citizens enabled with Digital Infrastructure as an utility to every citizen, and (3) Aadhaar as national resident authentication tool implemented, both government and citizens are ready for on boarding to Digital India Platform.  It  is time for government to launch citizen services on Digital India platform. The second vision area of Digital India stipulates to “Deliver governance and services on-demand”. The government has rolled out the following services so far and list is expected to grow as the time passes

• e-Kranti: service is one of the most crucial initiative of Digital India, involving provision of services like e-health care, technology for justice , E-education and more. E-healthcare would cover online medical consultation, online medical records, online medicine supply, pan-India exchange of patient information. Medical records of each patient, including multimedia data like CT scans, X-rays, and MRIs are stored and access from single point of access. Technology for justice plans to integrate the justice system using IT by providing online portals for registering FIRs, upload evidences and eventually reduce the number of pending cases the Indian judiciary system faces by providing an efficient and hassle free litigation process.
• e-Education aims at developing Massive Open Online(MOOC) that can 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 economically feasible to open physical branches of banks and full government services in India, since it is such a widespread nation with distributed population in villages and cities. Hence to provide equal services  to all the citizens of the country, e-governance has been envisioned and planned to be implemented and is one of the nine pillars of the Digital India (second vision area also).  Using pervasive nature of  digital Technology (IT)  as platform government intends to reach every far corner of the nation and provide services like voter cards, Aadhaar card, integration of services, registration of companies
• Information for all: The objective of this initiative is over come challenge of making information available to all stake holders across the nation. It also aims to make document imperishable, pervasive and immune to theft and loss.
• SBM Mobile APP: It is an instrument for clean India
• National scholarship portal: Allows student to apply for (1) fresh scholarship and (2) renew  existing ones. It is a one-stop solution for students across the nation.
• Digilocker : It is the first step to a paper-less India. It is Government of India’s cloud-based platform for storage, sharing and verification of documents and certificates.  Each resident is given a Digilocker account. Citizen need not worry about storing their  personal documents. Resident can upload documents, store and share with

• E-sign: This is a provision for signing documents online and exchange them. Its advantages include (1) saves cost, paper and time, (2) tamper- proof digital signature, (3)  signature is legally recognized and (4) privacy is maintained.

These service are but tip of digital India iceberg. Many more services are on th way to citizens.

4. Readying Government for Digital India service delivery

4. Readying Government for Digital India service delivery

To deliver citizen services electronically, the government needs to build digital infrastructure. To be sure, Digital India is the continuation of earlier government efforts to digitize government operations. Earlier efforts were called e-governance initiatives. Digital India infrastructure building process takes 2 forms. (1) investing in new infrastructure and (2) consolidating the existing e-infrastructure built for various projects. An important aspect of broadband highway initiative is the development of the National Information Infrastructure (NII).

NII is supposed to be implemented by integrating the already existing networks like

• National Knowledge Network ( NKN),
• State Wide Area Network(SWAN),
• Government User Network (GUN),
• National Optical Fiber Network ( NOFN) and MeghRaj Cloud.

NII will provide high speed Internet connectivity to Government entities by accessing the network and cloud infrastructure in India.

3 . An Overview of Digital India: The Citizen Enablers

Digital India is comprehensive program. It aims to deliver citizen services electronically. To realize this dream, the government has come out with detailed set of proposals. These proposals can be grouped into “ enablers “ and “ citizen services”

Enablers: The first category of proposals are called “ enablers” because they enable citizens with technology to access and avail citizen services. The following are proposals comes under this category

Universal access to mobile connectivity:  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 is an assorted set of services offered by government departments and other basic services such as banking , insurance where mobile number of the citizen acts as authentication for ensuring reliability of services. Hence citizen’s access to this infrastructure mobile connectivity is pivotal for successful delivery of digital India citizen services electronically

Public internet access program:  this initiate aims to improve the connectivity with the country. This entails building common service centers (CSC) in each gram panchayat and also converting post offices into multi-service centers.  The CSC would provide citizens with centres from where they can get access to multiple services like utility bill payments, exam records, land records and more. Post office will provide not only postal services but also financial services like saving and insurance.

Broadband Highways:  this initiative is fundamental to the success of digital India. It is the first step in digitizing India through the Internet connectivity in all areas within the country. All services that would be made available as part of Digital India program would require good connectivity across the country Broadband highways is the initiative that aims to provide this basic connectivity to all citizens. As part of this initiative 250,000 gram panchayats are planned to covered under the national Optical Fiber Network (NOFN).

With above three initiatives every citizen is enabled to participate in Digital India program and avail its services.