What is Digital India?

What is Digital India?

Digital India is a Programme to prepare India for a knowledge future. Hon'ble Shri Narender Modi, Prime Minsiter of India has laid emphasis on National e- governance plan and has gave it’s approval for Digital India – A programme to transform India into digital empowered society and knowledge economy. 

Digital India is an ambitious programme of Government of India projected at Rs 1,13,000 crores. This will be for preparing the India for the knowledge based transformation and delivering 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 Technology (DeitY) and will impact ministry of communications & IT, ministry of rural development, ministry of human resource development, ministry of health and others. This programme 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 progress 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, infrastructure development; joint secretary, capacity building and digital enablement; and joint secretary, IT applications in uncovered areas & process re-engineering. 

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.^[29] 9 Key points of Digital India Programme are as follow ^[30]

·         Broadband Highways

·         Universal Access to Phones

·         Public Internet Access Programme

·         e-Governance – Reforming government through Technology

·         e-Kranti – Electronic delivery of services

·         Information for All

·         Electronics Manufacturing – Target NET ZERO Imports

·         IT for Jobs

·         Early Harvest Programmes

Digital India Week

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 delivery. 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, agriculture, 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 tob 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.