Many of Digital India initiatives have now reached a stage where awareness on the part of
potential users and their active participation is necessary for digital technology
to be successful. Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad
stating that today said that the Prime Minister would launch the Digital India
Week on 1st of July with a view to empower the people of the country
through the
Digital India Programme. He said this programme has been designed to be a game
changer. The Government of India has been under taking a series ofinitiatives
for developing various applications and portals that
would go a long way in making the lives of the citizens better. The Digital India
Week to be launched by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on 1stJuly,
2015 aims at encouraging people’s involvement and creating awareness among them.
Digital India
has been envisioned as an ambitious umbrella programmeto transform India into
a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. It comprises of various
initiatives under the single programme 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.
This programme has been envisaged and coordinated by the Department
of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) in collaboration with various
Central Ministries/Departments and State Governments. The Prime Minister as the
Chairman of Monitoring Committee on Digital India, activities under the Digital India initiative
is being carefully monitored. All the existing and ongoing e-Governance
initiatives have been revamped to align them with the principles of Digital
India.
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 and
(iii) Digital
Empowerment of Citizens
With the above vision, 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.Several projects/products have
already launched or ready to be launched as indicated below:
·
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.
·
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.
·
Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) Mobile app would be used
by people and Government organisations for achieving the goals of
Swachh Bharat Mission.
·
eSign framework would allow citizens to digitally sign a document
online using Aadhaar authentication.
·
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.
·
National
Scholarships Portal is 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.
·
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.
·
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.
·
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.
·
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.
·
To
deliver citizen services electronically and improve the way citizens and
authorities transact with each other, it is imperative to have ubiquitous
connectivity. The government also realises this need as reflected by including
‘broadband highways’ as one of the pillars of Digital
India. While connectivity is one criterion, enabling and providing
technologies to facilitate delivery of services to citizens forms the
other.
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
·
BPO
Policy has been approved to create BPO centres in different North Eastern
states and also in smaller / mofussil towns of other states.
·
Electronics
Development Fund (EDF) Policy aims to promote Innovation,
R&D, Product Development and to create a resource pool of IP within the
countryto create a self-sustaining eco-system of Venture Funds.
·
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.
·
Centre
of Excellence on Internet on Things (IoT) is a joint initiative of
Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), ERNET and
NASSCOM.
·
Major
industry leaders are likely to make announcements involving billions of dollars ofinvestments
in Electronics Manufacturing and Digital India. These
investments will also result in employment to several lakhs of people.
Following
leaders are likely to participate in the Digital India Week launch function:
1. Shri Cyrus P Mistry, Chairman, Tata Sons
Limited.
2. ShriMukesh D. Ambani, Chairman & MD,
Reliance Industries Ltd.
3. Shri Sunil Mittal, Chairman and Group CEO,
Bharti Enterprises
4. ShriKumaramangalam Birla, Chairman, Aditya
Birla Group
5. Shri Anil Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Group
6. Shri Anil Agarwal, Chairman, Sterlite
Technologies Limited.
7. Shri Ping Cheng, CEO, Delta Electronics,
Inc.
8. Shri Azim Premji, Chairman, Wipro
Limited.
9. ShriHari Om Rai, Chairman & MD, LAVA
International Ltd.
10. Shri Peter Gutsmeidl, CEO, Airbus Group.
11. ShriPawan Munjal, Hero Group of
Companies.
12. ShriMikio Katayama, Vice
Chairman, Nidec
Corporation
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.
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