Bilal Ahmad Paray
Across the length and breadth of this country, India faces many challenges. But when tack-led with innovation that leverages the power of technology, it can help to create a trans-formed and digitally empowered India. We need to challenge those challenges.
The Intel & DST – Innovate for Digital India Challenge seeks breakthrough solutions, that provide easy, effective technology in the hands of every citizen to help them enhance the quality of their lives.
Digital India is a Programme to prepare India for a knowledge future. Shri Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India has laid emphasis on National e- governance plan and has given it’s approval for Digital India – A programme to transform India into digital empowered society and knowledge economy. As a formula created by Narendra Modi for digital India, that IT plus IT is equal to IT meaning in broader sense as India’s talent and Information Technology together make India’s tomorrow.
Digital Technologies which include Cloud Computing and Mobile Applications have emerged as catalysts 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 to connect with each other and also to share information on issues and concerns faced by us. In some cases they also enable resolution of those issues in near real time.
The objective of the Digital India Group is to come out with innovative ideas and practical solutions to realise Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of a digital India. Prime Minister of India envisions transforming our nation and creating opportunities for all citizens by harnessing digital technologies. His vision is to empower every citizen with access to digital services, knowledge and information. This Group will come up with policies and best practices from around the world to make this vision of a digital India a reality.
Digital India is an ambitious programme of Government of India projected at Rs 1,13,000 crores. This will be for preparing India for the knowledge based transformation and de-livering good governance to citizens by synchronized and co-ordinated engagement with both Central Government and State Government.
This programme has been envisaged by Department of Electronics and Information Tech-nology (DeitY) and will impact ministry of communications & IT, ministry of rural devel-opment, ministry of human resource development, ministry of health and others. This pro-gramme will also benefit all states and union territories. The existing/ ongoing e-Governance initiatives would be revamped to align them with the principles of Digital India. The vision of Digital India is to transform the country into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. It would ensure that government services are available to citizens electronically. It would also bring in public accountability through mandated delivery of government’s services electronically.
The Digital India vision provides the intensified impetus for further momentum and pro-gress for e-Governance and would promote inclusive growth that covers electronic services, products, devices, manufacturing and job opportunities.
Digital infrastructure will focus on providing high speed secure Internet. Governance and services on demand will stress on integrating services across departments and jurisdictions and making services available in real time for both online and mobile platform.
Digital empowerment of citizens will pay emphasis on universal digital literacy and availability of digital resources/services in Indian languages.
The programme will be implemented in phases from 2014 till 2018. The source of funding for most of the e-Governance projects at present is through budgetary provisions of respective ministries/departments in the central or state governments. Requirements of funds for individual project(s) for Digital India will be worked out by respective nodal ministries/departments but according to government estimate it will cost Rs 113,000 crore. To implement this the government is planning to strengthen National Informatics Center (NIC) by restructuring it to support all central government departments and state governments. Positions of chief information officers (CIO) would be created in at least 10 key ministries so that e-Governance projects could be designed, developed and implemented faster.
Apart from this, the DeitY would create four senior positions within the department for managing the programme say additional secretary, Digital India; joint secretary, infrastruc-ture development; joint secretary, capacity building and digital enablement; and joint secretary, IT applications in uncovered areas & process re-engineering.
Pillars of Digital India:
There are nine pillars of Digital India:
* Broadband Highways
Laying of national optical fibre network (NOFN) in all 2.5 lakh gram panchayats in the country will happen in a phased manner.
* Universal Access to Mobile connectivity
Ensuring mobile access in around 44,000 uncovered villages in the country and government is taking steps to ensure that all villages are covered through mobile connectivity by 2018.
* Public Internet access
To expand the coverage of common services center (CSC) from 1.35 lakhs to 1.5 lakhs, i.e. one in every panchayat.
* e-Governance
Business process re-engineeering will be undertaken to improve processes and service de-livery. Services will be integrated with UIDAI, payment gateway and mobile platform.
* e-Kranti
e-Kranti focuses on electronic delivery of services whether it is education, health, agricul-ture, justice and financial inclusion.
* Global Information
The focus will be on online hosting of data and proactive engagement through social media and web based platforms like MyGov.
* Electronics Manufacturing
Focus is on set to boxes, VSAT, mobile, consumer electronics, medical electronics, smart energy meters, smart cards and micro ATMs.
* IT Training for Jobs
The government is planning to train one crore students from small towns and villages for IT sector.
* Early Harvest Programmes
The government is planning to deploy Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System in all central government offices located at Delhi. A web based application software system will enable online recording of attendance and its viewing by the concerned stakeholders.
Vision of Digital India:
Infrastructure as a utility to every citizen:
High speed internet shall be made available in all gram panchayats; Cradle to grave digital identity; Mobile and Bank account would enable participation in digital and financial space at individual level; Easy access to common service centre within their locality; Shareable private space on a public cloud; and Safe and secure cyber space in the country.
Governance and Services on Demand:
Single window access to all persons by seamlessly integrating departments or jurisdictions; availa-bility of government services in online and mobile platforms; All citizen entitlements to be available on the Cloud to ensure easy access; Government services to be digitally transformed for improving ease of doing business; Making financial transactions above a threshold, electronic and cashless; and Leveraging GIS for decision support systems and development.
Digital empowerment of citizens:
Universal digital literacy; All digital resources universally accessible; All government docu-ments/certificates to be available on the Cloud; Availability of digital resources/services in Indian languages; Collaborative digital platforms for participative governance; Portability of all entitle-ments for individuals through the cloud.
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