Digital India

Vision of Digital India

The vision of Digital India programme is to transform India into a digitally empowered society

and knowledge economy.

Vision Areas of Digital India

The Digital India programme is centred on three key vision areas:

Digital Infrastructure as a Core Utility to Every Citizen

Governance and Services on Demand

Digital Empowerment of Citizens

VISION 1. Digital Infrastructure as a Utility to Every Citizen

Availability of high speed internet as a core utility for delivery of services to citizens Cradle to grave digital identity that is unique, lifelong, online and authenticable to every citizen Mobile phone & bank account enabling citizen participation in digital & financial space Easy access to a Common Service Centre Shareable private space on a public cloud Safe and secure cyber-space

VISION 2. Governance & Services on Demand

Seamlessly integrated services across departments or jurisdictions Availability of services in real time from online & mobile platforms All citizen entitlements to be portable and available on the cloud Digitally transformed services for improving ease of doing business Making financial transactions electronic & cashless Leveraging Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) for decision support systems & development

VISION 3. Digital Empowerment of Citizens

Universal digital literacy Universally accessible digital resources Availability of digital resources / services in Indian languages Collaborative digital platforms for participative governance Citizens not required to physically submit Govt. documents / certificates

Vision 1: Digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen infrastructure

A well connected nation is a prerequisite to a well served nation. Once the remotest of the Indian villagers are digitally connected through broadband and high speed internet, then delivery of electronic government services to every citizen, targeted social benefits, and

financial inclusion can be achieved in reality. One of the key areas on which the vision of Digital India is centred is “digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen”. A key component under this vision is high speed internet as a core utility to facilitate online delivery of various services. It is planned to set up enabling infrastructure for digital identity, financial inclusion and ensure easy availability of common services centres. It is also proposed to provide citizens with “digital lockers” which would be sharable private spaces on a public cloud, and where documents issued by Government departments and agencies could be stored for easy online access. It is also planned to ensure that the cyberspace is made safe and secure.

High-speed internet as a core utility

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have the potential of not only bridging the great digital divide in the country (in terms of easy and effective access to ICTs) but also of positively contributing to the growth of the economy, employment and productivity. The emphasis is on providing high speed internet connectivity across the length and breadth of the country by deploying ICT infrastructure, optical fibre, and last-mile connectivity options offered by wireless technologies in a manner that is affordable, reliable and competitive. The plan of action and timelines are as follows:

Focus Area Intended Outcome

Broadband for rural areas Coverage for 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats (GPs) by 2016-17

Broadband for urban areas Virtual Network Operators for service delivery; Mandatory communication infrastructure in new urban settlements and buildings

National Information Infrastructure Integration of all core ICT infrastructure built under National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) for greater efficiency and synergy; Nationwide coverage by March 2017

Universal access to mobile connectivity

Greater network penetration; Coverage for 55,619 uncovered villages by 2018

Public Internet Access Programme under National Rural Internet Mission

Coverage for 2,50,000 GPs by 2016-17 through Common Services Centers (CSCs); Recasting of 1,50,000 post offices as multi-service centres by 2015-16

Cradle-to-grave digital identity

The ideal identity is one that is unique, singularly sufficient, robust enough to disallow duplicate and fake records, easily and digitally authenticable in an inexpensive manner, and lifelong.

Aadhaar, a 12-digit individual identification number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on behalf of the Government of India, meets these requirements. It is essentially a paperless online anytime-anywhere identity assigned to a resident to cover his/her entire lifetime. The verification of identity is done online with the help of authentication devices which connect to UIDAI’s Central Identity Repository and return a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response to the basic query, “Is the person who he/she claims to be?”, based on the demographic and

biometric data available with UIDAI. Aadhaar can be used by any application which needs to establish the identity of a resident and/or provide secure access for the resident to services/benefits/entitlements offered by the application. DeitY conducted a consultation workshop with various stakeholders in October 2014 to brainstorm on various aspects of how mobile phones can be used as instruments for electronic authentication of individuals’ identities. The key outcome of the workshop and further deliberations was that “digital identity” should imply enabling mobility while establishing a person’s identity. For usage of mobile as an instrument of digital identity, three possible mobile identity solutions emerged: (1) mobile number linked with Aadhaar; (2) mobile with digital signatures; and (3) Mobile with voice biometrics (either standalone, or linked to mobile number). Work is underway to implement the most efficient and effective solution to enable

citizens to enjoy the benefits of a mobile-linked cradle-to-grave digital identity.

Participation in digital & financial space through mobiles & banking

Indian telecom sector is the world’s fastest growing telecom sector. The massive and growing penetration of mobile phones in India, especially in rural areas, provides a ready and widespread base for access to and delivery of public services electronically. Data access through mobiles continues to gain popularity, and as on date, around 80 per cent of internet users in India access internet through mobile devices. This holds great promise and potential for e-governance in general and digital-cum-financial inclusion in particular.

In the mobile space, DeitY has launched Mobile Seva, a revolutionary whole-of-

government mobile governance initiative, enabling government departments and agencies across the nation to deliver public services to citizens and businesses through mobile devices across various mobile-based channels such as SMS, USSD, mobile apps, and voice/ IVRS. In the financial space, DeitY has collaborated with NSDL Database Management Limited (NDML) for providing PayGov, a centralized platform for facilitating all government departments and services to collect online payments from citizens for public services. PayGov offers an end-to-end transactional experience for citizens who can opt from various payment options such as

Net Banking (65+ banks), debit cards, credit cards, cash cards/ prepaid cards/ wallets, and NEFT/ RTGS, etc. The 'Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana' has been launched as a national mission encompassing an integrated approach to bring about comprehensive financial inclusion of all the households in the country. The plan envisages universal access to banking facilities with at least one basic banking account per household, financial literacy, access to credit, insurance and pension facility. It also envisages channeling all government benefits to the beneficiaries’ bank accounts. A special track on “mobile as an instrument of financial inclusion” was organized during the mobile identity brainstorming consultation workshop conducted at DeitY in October 2014. The workshop and further deliberations brought to fore that the extensive distribution networks of telecom service providers as well as the actual coverage and connectivity provided by them have the potential of addressing the challenges facing smooth functioning of banking services in

rural areas, such as availability of power, cash management, security and adequacy of cash-in/cash-out points. Mobiles can serve as a viable and effective complementary channel for financial inclusion

Easy access to a Common Service Centre (CSC)

Implemented under the NeGP formulated by DeitY, the CSCs are ICT-enabled front-end service delivery points (kiosks) at the village level for delivery of government, financial, social and private sector services in the areas of agriculture, health, education, entertainment, banking, insurance, pension, utility payments, etc. CSCs operate within a public-private-partnership (PPP) model and a 3-tier structure consisting

of the CSC operator (known as the Village Level Entrepreneur or VLE), the Service Centre Agency (SCA) for establishing CSCs in a zone consisting of a few districts, and a State Designated Agency (SDA) for managing the implementation in the State. CSCs enable government, private and social sector organizations to align their social and commercial goals for the benefit of the rural population in the remotest corners of the country through a combination of IT-based as well as non-IT-based services. The initial target was to establish 1,00,000 CSCs in 6,00,000 villages in the ratio of one CSC for every 6 villages. As on date, more than 1,37,000 CSCs are operational across the country. Under the proposed CSC 2.0 programme, it is planned to increase the number of CSCs to 2,50,000 (covering all panchayats) to facilitate easier access to CSCs for the citizens.

What is in it for the citizens?

Current scenario for a villager without easy access to a CSC Inadequate access to government services and internet.

Changed scenario Internet connectivity is available through the CSC. The neighbourhood CSC is a convenient and friendly place to know and avail G2C services,

banking services (including loans) and also to learn about suitable agricultural practices.

Several B2C services are available too in the CSC. Family members can learn computer skills at the CSC and also undergo vocational trainings for

better family income.

Shareable private space on a public cloud

Easy and authentication-based access to a digital locker, i.e. a shareable private space on a public cloud, can greatly facilitate paperless transactions. Citizens can digitally store Government-issued digital documents and certificates and share them with various agencies without having to submit or send physical documents or copies.

Digital Locker to Citizens – A Game Changer

Current Scenario: Citizens need to submit paper documents to avail government services.

How Digital India initiative will impact: Government of India would provide a digital private space, i.e. Digital Locker, to every citizen. The ‘Digital Locker’ would enable citizens to securely store all their important documents and

credential. The electronic documents can be shared with public agencies or others without the need to

physically submit them. Such a ‘digital locker’ will greatly improve citizen convenience and usher in paperless

transactions across the entire ecosystem of public services. In a situation of disaster, e.g. flood, storm, fire, etc, when citizens may loose paper documents,

documents in the digital repository would be accessible for them anytime, anywhere to avail government or private services.

The digital locker would have a collection of repositories (digital repository) for issuing authorities (issuer) to upload their documents (electronic document) in a standard format. Personal locker provided to citizens would also act as a platform for storing the links (termed as Document URI) for accessing the documents directly from these repositories. This platform

would enable the citizens to securely share their documents with the service providers who can also directly access public documents from the issuing authority through an authenticated route. To accelerate the delivery of cloud-based services, DeitY has launched the MeghRaj Cloud initiative. This would comprise several central and state clouds built on existing or new (augmented) infrastructure, following a set of common protocols, guidelines and standards issued by Government of India. DeitY has also issued two policy reports, “GI Cloud Strategic

Direction Paper” and “GI Cloud Adoption and Implementation Roadmap” for encouraging adoption of cloud based services.

Vision 2. Governance & Services on Demand

Seamlessly integrated services across departments or jurisdictions

Availability of services in real time from online & mobile platforms

All citizen entitlements to be portable and available on the cloud

Digitally transformed services for improving ease of doing business

Making financial transactions electronic & cashless

Leveraging Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) for decision support systems & development

Over the years, a large number of initiatives have been undertaken by various State Governments and Central Ministries to usher in an era of e-governance. Sustained efforts have been made at multiple levels to improve the delivery of public services and simplify the process of accessing them. E-governance in India has steadily evolved from computerization of Government Departments to initiatives that encapsulate the finer points of Governance, such as citizen centricity, service orientation and transparency. The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) was approved in 2006 to take a holistic view of e-governance initiatives across the country, integrating them into a collective vision. Around this idea, a massive countrywide infrastructure reaching down to the remotest of villages is being

developed, and large-scale digitization of records is taking place to enable easy and reliable access over the internet. The ultimate objective was to make all government services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets, and ensure efficiency, transparency, and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realise the basic needs of the common man". Six elements are crucial for ensuring that governance and services are made available on

demand to all citizens and other stakeholders in the country.

Seamlessly integrated services across departments or jurisdictions

Access to some services often also involves documents, approvals and clearances from

authorities outside the department/ jurisdiction providing the service. Today, the focus is on providing single-window access to such services so that the citizens and businesses save time and effort across multiple departments or jurisdictions concerned. This is exemplified by the e-Biz and e-Trade projects under the NeGP. In order to provide integrated services, DeitY has notified e-governance standards (available at https://egovstandards.gov.in/). Further, Open API and Open Source policies are also being finalized by DeitY. The API policy sets out the Government’s approach on the use of open APIs to promote software interoperability for all e-governance applications and systems and provide access to data & services for promoting

participation of citizens and other stakeholders. Also, common platforms like MeghRaj Cloud Platform, Mobile Seva, PayGov and eSangam have been established by DeitY for the Departments and States for the purposes of interoperable and integrated services.

Services available in real time from online & mobile platforms

The focus today is on designing e-Governance applications in such a way that the related information, services and grievance-handling mechanism are accessible online on a real time basis and across all types of access devices such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets, mobiles, etc. To ensure provisioning of high speed broadband connectivity at panchayat level, the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project is being implemented by the Department of

Telecommunications (DoT). This aims to resolve the connectivity issues by taking gigabit fibre to all the panchayats in the country. The Mobile Seva project of DeitY is a highly successful project that provides a common national platform to all Government departments and agencies at the central, state and local levels for providing mobile based services and mobile apps. Over 1900 government departments and agencies across the country are using the mobile platform for mobile enabled services. This initiative has won the 2014 United Nations Public Service Award. Mobile Seva is a winner at United Nations Public Service Awards (2014) under the category “Promoting Whole-of-Government Approaches in the Information Age”. It is the only winner from India in 2014.

Changing the Life of Citizens through Internet & Mobile connectivity

Current scenario: Difficulty in availing government services due to lack of internet connectivity.

Changed scenario: Use of mobile phone or laptop would help in checking the status of entitlements, bank account details, etc. Access to internet and focus on digital literacy will also help citizens aspire for better jobs and improved quality of life. Text books will be available in the form of e-books which can be downloaded on laptops. Citizens may avail government and private services from home by accessing the software applications through internet.

All citizen entitlements to be portable and available on the cloud

The flexibility, agility, cost effectiveness and transparency offered by the cloud technologies should be considered while designing and hosting of applications. In order to utilize and harness

the benefits of Cloud Computing, Government of India has embarked upon an ambitious initiative – “GI Cloud” which has been named as ‘MeghRaj’. The focus of this initiative is to accelerate delivery of e-services in the country while optimizing ICT spending of the Government. The cloud platform can host online repositories for all possible entitlements thereby providing a single source of truth. This includes areas like Public Distribution System, BPL entitlements, social sector benefits, LPG and other subsidies, etc. The platform can enable automated registration, maintenance and delivery of citizen entitlements under several government schemes. This will provide delivery for these entitlements on an anywhere, anytime basis. A

citizen moving to a new place shall not lose his/her entitlements and will not have to go through a lengthy process to register and supply documents afresh to continue getting the benefits. The plan is to leverage the cloud platform for addressing the portability issue towards ensuring continuity of citizen entitlements across the entire country. A major milestone was achieved in October 2014 with the launch of provident fund portability through the Universal Account Number (UAN). Employees now need not worry about transferring the funds lying in their provident fund accounts when they change their locations.

Digitally transformed services for improving ease of doing business

Starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency and other clearances etc. are the various experiences that define how easy

or difficult it is to do business in a country. Government services for businesses shall be digitally transformed for improving Ease of Doing Business in the country. The existing MMPs under the NeGP shall be strengthened using latest tools and technologies:

The e-Biz project provides integrated services across various central and state departments/ agencies through a single window mechanism to all businesses and investors for setting up a commercial enterprise.

The ‘MCA21’ MMP aims at providing electronic services for statutory requirements and other business related services.

The e-Trade MMP facilitates foreign trade in India by promoting effective and efficient delivery of services by various regulatory/ facilitating agencies involved in foreign trade, to enable traders to avail online services from these agencies.

Making financial transactions electronic & cashless

Electronic payments and fund transfers have the advantage of targeted and direct delivery to the intended beneficiaries without the involvement of middlemen who may otherwise subvert the system. Similarly, online mechanisms for payment of fees for certain public services offer a transparent, friendly and expeditious channel to citizens for payments. All financial transactions above a threshold shall be made electronic & cashless. DeitY has created PayGov India as a centralized payment gateway for all Government Departments and agencies in the country. It is operated and maintained by NSDL Database Management Ltd (NDML), a wholly owned subsidiary of National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL). PayGov India is securely integrated with National and State Service Delivery Gateways (NSDG

and SSDG) to enable sharing of information across databases for efficient service delivery, and also with the Mobile Services Delivery Gateway (MSDG) under Mobile Seva. The citizens can choose from a host of e-payment options such as Net banking, credit card, debit card, prepaid/ cash card/ wallet, Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) and mobile wallet.

Leveraging Geospatial Information System (GIS) for decision support systems & development

Various government services can be offered in a better way by proper use of GIS technology in the e-governance applications. National Geospatial Information System (NGIS) is being

implemented to integrate geo-spatial data available with a number of organizations such as Survey of India, National Informatics Centre (NIC), NRSA and Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) to develop a GIS platform for e-Governance applications. This GIS platform will be leveraged as a service for the benefit of various mission mode projects and other e-governance initiatives. NGIS can also be leveraged for monitoring the physical progress of projects, disaster management and specialized needs of public safety agencies.

Vision 3. Digital Empowerment of Citizens

Universal digital literacy Universally accessible digital resources Availability of digital resources / services in Indian languages Collaborative digital platforms for participative governance Citizens not required to physically submit Govt. documents / certificates

Digital connectivity is a great leveller. Cutting across demographic and socio-economic

segments, Indians are increasingly connecting and communicating with each other through

mobile phones and computers riding on digital networks. The Digital India programme itself

promises to transform India into a digitally empowered society by focusing on digital literacy,

digital resources, and collaborative digital platforms. This also places emphasis on universal

digital literacy and availability of digital resources/services in Indian languages.

Universal Digital Literacy

Digital literacy assumes paramount importance at an individual level for truly and fully leveraging the potential the Digital India programme. It provides the citizens the ability to fully exploit the digital technologies to empower themselves. It helps them seek better livelihood opportunities and become economically secure. The focus today is on making at least one person e-literate in every household. Core ICT infrastructure set up by the central and state governments, such as CSCs, can play a critical role in taking digital literacy to the remotest locations of the country. To ensure that all panchayats in the country have high-speed connectivity, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has established Bharat Broadband Network Ltd. (BBNL) to roll out the National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN). BBNL will lay out the optic fiber cable terminating in each of the 2,50,000 gram panchayats in

the country, providing 100 Mbps link to be used as information highway by all the stakeholders to ensure that digital inclusion reaches all villages across the country. This will ensure digitization and connectivity of the local institutions, such as panchayat office, schools, health centres, libraries, etc. The industry has also come forward to support the e-literacy goal through the National Digital Literacy Mission. National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT), an autonomous society under DeitY, has identified more than 5000 facilitation centres across the country for training on courses which will equip a person to undertake e-Governance transactions through computers and other basic activities, like e-mail, browsing the internet, etc. NIELIT has also

signed MoUs with industry partners towards jointly conducting courses and online examinations on digital literacy.

Universally accessible digital resources

Digital resources are truly universally accessible when they are easily available and navigable everywhere and by everyone. Open resources have the advantage of being widely and inexpensively available and also being widely usable and customizable. Digital resources created or implemented along these lines can be accessed everywhere compared to resources developed from proprietary systems. Owner departments and agencies have the responsibility of ensuring that their digital resources are of high quality so that access and customization are not problematic.

Universally Accessible Digital Resources: Making government documents accessible to citizens anytime, anywhere!

Current scenario:

Government documents are not easily accessible.

Changed scenario:

Citizen related documents would be available electronically.

Government departments may access the documents issued by collateral government agencies.

Documents issued to the citizens would be available to them anywhere anytime, in a standard format

which can be shared with an authorized entity.

The documents may be available in local language as well.

Documents would be accessible to citizens through web portals and mobile applications.

The National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) requires government organizations to proactively release their datasets in an open format. Implementation of NDSAP in India is being done by NIC, an agency of DeitY, through the Open Government Platform for India (http://data.gov.in) which provides a single point access to all the open-format datasets published by different government departments. DeitY is also formulating a policy on open APIs

to make all the data and information provided by government organizations open and machine readable, which can then be consumed by other e-governance applications/ systems and the public. DeitY is responsible for setting up the API standards and designing a gateway for seamless sharing of information amongst the various government agencies. Digital resources are as useful as the manner in which they are rendered on the users’ devices, which may be mobile phones, tablets, computers, or other devices. These devices, while all able to access sites where digital resources are available, may be based on varying support standards and also may or may not support differentiated styles of content presentation and

layout. In such cases, the content may not be rendered correctly on all devices. Conformance to DeitY-notified standards for government data and application of the necessary style sheets and other server side solutions can help owner departments and agencies achieve this aspect of universal accessibility of their digital resources. Under the Digital India programme, the government is also committed to providing access to digital resources for citizens with special needs, such as those with visual or hearing impairments (which may be partial or complete), learning or cognitive disabilities, physical disabilities which hinder operation of ubiquitous access devices such as phones, tablets and computers.

All documents/certificates to be available on cloud

Citizens should not be asked to provide government documents or certificates, which are

already available with some department/institution of the government, in physical form. Portability of all electronic documents should also be ensured. As an example, educational institutions should ensure that all their degrees and certificates are digitized and kept in online repositories with appropriate access protocols. The citizen, while filling some application form, should not be asked to submit the certified copies of his/her educational certificates but should provide details of these certificates available in an online repository which can be seen by the agency concerned using the pointer provided by the citizen. All these repositories of all government issued documents/certificates should be hosted on a cloud platform to provide a single source of truth for these documents/certificates. The data may include categories such as digitally signed educational certificates, land records, driving licenses, permits, etc. Requesting departments or users may be provided authenticated access to the digital repository available

over the cloud.

Availability of digital resources/ services in Indian languages

India has a remarkable diversity in terms of languages written and spoken in different parts of the country. There are 22 official languages and 12 scripts. Knowledge of English is limited to a very small section of the population in the country. The rest often cannot access or comprehend digital resources which are available mainly in English. DeitY has initiated the Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) programme for developing information processing tools and techniques to facilitate human-machine interaction without language barriers, creating and accessing multilingual knowledge resources, and integrating them to develop innovative user products and services. The programme also promotes language technology standardization through active participation in international and

national standardization bodies such as ISO, UNICODE, World-wide-Web consortium (W3C) and Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to ensure adequate representation of Indian languages in existing and future language technology standards. DeitY has also initiated the Localization Projects Management Framework (LPMF) to help localize applications under the MMPs and other government applications. DeitY is also formulating a new mission mode project named as e-Bhasha to help develop and disseminate digital content in local languages to India's largely non-English speaking population. The disabled friendly content and systems are being developed as per accessibility standards.

Collaborative digital platforms for participative governance

Traditionally, digital platforms have been used for dissemination of information and provision of services to the users. Through these platforms, Government could establish communication with the citizens though it was mostly one-way. Digital platforms, with necessary thrust from developments on technology front, have come of age and can now facilitate government departments to have effective two-way communication and interaction with citizens. Platforms that are more collaborative facilitate greater participation from the users. Instead of reaching out to citizens every now and then, government can be in touch with them round the clock through digital platforms which would facilitate participative governance. The platform would provide a mechanism to discuss various issues to arrive at innovative solutions, make suggestions to the government, provide feedback on governance, rate the

government actions/policies/initiatives, and actively participate with the government to achieve the desired outcomes. DeitY has recently launched a nationwide digital platform named as “myGov” (www.mygov.in) to facilitate collaborative and participative governance. DeitY also maintains a social media page highlighting e-governance services being provided through NeGP at https://www.facebook.com/NationaleGovernancePlan which has over 1 lakh fans and followers as on date.

Nine pillars of Digital India

1. Broadband Highways

2. Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity

3. Public Internet Access Programme

4. e-Governance: Reforming Government through Technology

5. e-Kranti - Electronic Delivery of Services

6. Information for All

7. Electronics Manufacturing

8. IT for Jobs

9. Early Harvest Programmes

Broadband Highways

This covers three sub components, namely Broadband for All Rural, Broadband for All Urban and National Information Infrastructure.

Under Broadband for All Rural, 250 thousand village Panchayats would be covered by December, 2016. DoT will be the Nodal Department and the project cost is estimated to be approximately Rs. 32,000 Cr.

Under Broadband for All Urban, Virtual Network Operators would be leveraged for service delivery and communication infrastructure in new urban development and buildings would be mandated.

National Information Infrastructure would integrate the networks like SWAN, NKN and NOFN along with cloud enabled National and State Data Centres. It will also have provision for horizontal connectivity to 100, 50, 20 and 5 government offices/ service outlets at state, district, block and panchayat levels respectively. DeitY will be the nodal department and the project cost is estimated to be around Rs 15,686 Cr for implementation in 2 years and maintenance & support for 5 years.

Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity

The initiative is to focus on network penetration and fill the gaps in connectivity in the country. All together 42,300 uncovered villages will be covered for providing universal mobile

connectivity in the country. DoT will be the nodal department and project cost will be around Rs 16,000 Cr during FY 2014-

18.

Public Internet Access Programme

The two sub components of Public Internet Access Programme are Common Service Centres and Post Offices as multi-service centres.

Common Service Centres would be strengthened and its number would be increased from approximately 135,000 operational at present to 250,000 i.e. one CSC in each Gram Panchayat.

CSCs would be made viable, multi-functional end-points for delivery of government and business services. DeitY would be the nodal department to implement the scheme.

A total of 150,000 Post Offices are proposed to be converted into multi service centres. Department of Posts would be the nodal department to implement this scheme.

e-Governance: Reforming Government through Technology

Government Business Process Re-engineering using IT to improve transactions is the most critical for transformation across government and therefore needs to be implemented by all ministries/ departments. The guiding principles for reforming government through technology are:

Form simplification and field reduction – Forms should be made simple and user friendly and only minimum and necessary information should be collected.

Online applications, tracking of their status and interface between departments should be provided.

Use of online repositories e.g. school certificates, voter ID cards, etc. should be mandated so that citizens are not required to submit these documents in physical form.

Integration of services and platforms, e.g. UIDAI, Payment Gateway, Mobile Platform, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) etc. should be mandated to facilitate integrated and interoperable service delivery to citizens and businesses. Electronic Databases – all databases and information should be electronic and not manual. Workflow Automation Inside Government – The workflow inside government departments and agencies should be automated to enable efficient government processes and also to allow visibility of these processes to the citizens. Public Grievance Redressal - IT should be used to automate, respond and analyze data to identify and resolve persistent problems. These would be largely process improvements.

e-Kranti - Electronic Delivery of Services

There are 31 Mission Mode Projects under different stages of e-governance project lifecycle. Further, 10 new MMPs have been added to e-Kranti by the Apex Committee on National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) headed by the Cabinet Secretary in its meeting held on 18th March 2014. Technology for Education – e-Education

All Schools will be connected with broadband. Free wifi will be provided in all secondary and higher secondary schools (coverage would be around 250,000 schools). A programme on digital literacy would be taken up at the national level. MOOCs –Massive Online Open Courses shall be developed and leveraged for e-Education. Technology for Health – e-Healthcare

E-Healthcare would cover online medical consultation, online medical records, online medicine supply, pan-India exchange for patient information. Pilots shall be undertaken in 2015 and full coverage would be provided in 3 years. Technology for Farmers

This would facilitate farmers to get real time price information, online ordering of inputs and online cash, loan and relief payment with mobile banking. Technology for Security

Mobile based emergency services and disaster related services would be provided to citizens on real time basis so as to take precautionary measures well in time and minimize loss of lives and properties. Technology for Financial Inclusion

Financial Inclusion shall be strengthened using Mobile Banking, Micro-ATM program and CSCs/ Post Offices. Technology for Justice

Interoperable Criminal Justice System shall be strengthened by leveraging e-Courts, e-Police, e-Jails and e-Prosecution. Technology for Planning

National GIS Mission Mode Project would be implemented to facilitate GIS based decision making for project planning, conceptualization, design and development. Technology for Cyber Security

National Cyber Security Co-ordination Center would be set up to ensure safe and secure cyber-space within the country.

Information for All

Open Data platform and online hosting of information & documents would facilitate open and easy access to information for citizens.

Government shall pro-actively engage through social media and web based platforms to inform citizens. MyGov.in has already been launched as a medium to exchange ideas/ suggestions with Government. It will facilitate 2-way communication between citizens and government.

Online messaging to citizens on special occasions/programs would be facilitated through emails and SMSes.

The above would largely utilise existing infrastructure and would need limited additional resources.

Electronics Manufacturing

Target NET ZERO Imports is a striking demonstration of intent. This ambitious goal requires coordinated action on many fronts

Taxation, incentives Economies of scale, eliminate cost disadvantages Focus areas – Big Ticket Items FABS, Fab-less design, Set top boxes, VSATs, Mobiles, Consumer

& Medical Electronics, Smart Energy meters, Smart cards, micro-ATMs Incubators, clusters Skill development Government procurement

There are many ongoing programs which will be fine-tuned.

Existing structures are inadequate to handle this goal and need strengthening.

IT for Jobs

1 Cr students from smaller towns & villages will be trained for IT sector jobs over 5 years. DeitY would be the nodal department for this scheme.

BPOs would be set up in every north-eastern state to facilitate ICT enabled growth in these states. DeitY would be the nodal department for this scheme.

3 lakh service delivery agents would be trained as part of skill development to run viable businesses delivering IT services. DeitY would be the nodal department for this scheme.

5 lakh rural workforce would be trained by the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) to cater to their own needs. Department of Telecom (DoT) would be the nodal department for this scheme.

Early Harvest Programmes

IT Platform for Messages A Mass Messaging Application has been developed by DeitY that will cover elected

representatives and all Government employees. 1.36 Cr mobiles and 22 Lakh emails are part of the database. Government Greetings to be e-Greetings

Basket of e-Greetings templates have been made available. Crowd sourcing of e-Greetings through MyGov platform has been ensured. E-Greetings portal has been made live on 14th August 2014. Biometric attendance

It will cover all Central Govt. Offices in Delhi and is already operational in DeitY and has been initiated in the Department of Urban Development. On-boarding has also started in other departments. Wi-Fi in All Universities

All universities on the National Knowledge Network (NKN) shall be covered under this scheme. Ministry of HRD is the nodal ministry for implementing this scheme. Secure Email within Government

Email would be the primary mode of communication. Phase-I upgradation for 10 lakh employees has been completed. In Phase II, infrastructure

would be further upgraded to cover 50 lakh employees by March 2015 at a cost of Rs 98 Cr. DeitY is the nodal department for this scheme. Standardize Government Email Design

Standardised templates for Government email are under preparation and would be ready by October 2014. This would be implemented by DeitY. Public Wi-fi hotspots

Cities with population of over 1 million and tourist centres would be provided with public wi-fi hotspots to promote digital cities. The scheme would be implemented by DoT and MoUD. School Books to be eBooks

All books shall be converted into eBooks. Min. of HRD/ DeitY would be the nodal agencies for this scheme. SMS based weather information, disaster alerts

SMS based weather information and disaster alerts would be provided. DeitY’s Mobile Seva Platform is already ready and available for this purpose. MoES (IMD) / MHA (NDMA) would be the nodal organizations for implementing this scheme. National Portal for Lost & Found children

This would facilitate real time information gathering and sharing on the lost and found children and would go a long way to check crime and improve timely response.

DeitY/ DoWCD would be the nodal departments for this project.

Digital India:Making an Impact Digital India focuses on transforming India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy, thus, impacting all facets of businesses, citizens and environment. It is projected that Digital India has the potential to provide an incremental 20-30% increase in GDP by 2025, resulting in an opportunity of close to $1 trillion annually by 2025. The impact of this programme can be felt across all domains through the adoption of technology in key sectors including financial services, healthcare, agriculture, energy, infrastructure and education.

Impacting citizens The Digital India project has the potential to impact the lives of citizens by creating employment opportunities, enhancing the quality and speed of service delivery, providing access to healthcare and education and improving social and financial inclusion. 1. Employment

• Job creation: With an estimated overall cost of INR 1,000 billion in ongoing schemes and INR 130 billion for proposed and new schemes, Digital India aims to create 17 million direct and 85 million indirect jobs by 2019. • Digital Training Programmes: The initiatives towards training and digital literacy by the government and private sector players such as NDLM, Digital Literacy Mission etc. have been successful in reaching out to millions of people. This has resulted in an increase in employability of the trained personnel, higher adoption of digital technologies and empowerment of a large section of society

2. Speed and Quality of Service delivery • Public service delivery: Digital India has enhanced the digitization of public services by increasing the reach and efficiency of service delivery. The number of e-governance transactions has doubled from 3.5 billion in 2014 to almost 7 billion in 2015, indicating that

e-services are gaining momentum and reaching the bottom of the pyramid. • Connectivity: The government is focussed on increasing last mile connectivity by providing an affordable broadband network to rural households and institutions. This network will be leveraged to roll out and increase adoption of digital services. • Universal Accessibility: The DigiLocker service has provided universal accessibility to citizens, by allowing then to access and share documents. Currently, there are approximately 4 million registered users with 5.0 million documents uploaded on the digital locker facility.

3. Social inclusion • Education: Digital India has the potential to overcome challenges in the education sector like inadequate infrastructure, high drop-out rate (40% in elementary education), low pupil teacher ratio (28:1) and poor gross enrolment ratio (21% in higher education). The government has allocated INR 1 billion50 to build virtual classrooms and provide online courses to address the teacher shortage and teacher quality problem. Under Digital India, the use of SmartClass solutions has put many private schools in India ahead of the technology adoption curve than many other schools in the US, Singapore and Japan. Online education platforms like massive open online courses (MOOCs) will provide easy accessibility from anywhere. The adoption of MOOCs, currently 8.8% has been slowly increasing while OLabs (Online Labs) is expected to improve student performance by providing teaching aids and already has 90,000 registered users. • Healthcare: Digital India has the potential to provide solutions to problems such as poor doctor patient ratio (1:1674), fewer quality physicians, insufficient healthcare infrastructure, lack of equal access to healthcare facilities and advice (24% in rural areas), and high healthcare costs. The e-hospital program is increasing delivery speed of healthcare services by allowing patients to book appointments online. Social Endeavour for Health and Telemedicine (Sehat) will increase coverage by providing healthcare access to citizens irrespective of their geographical location with close to 60,000 CSCs delivering tele-consultation services as part of Sehat.

4. Financial Inclusion • Reach of Digital Banking: India Post Payment Banks (IPPB) is expected to benefit 40% of the population which is currently outside the formal banking system by providing digital and online banking services through post office. The mobile and internet banking will increase the coverage and volume of financial transactions which will be key in the light of the recent demonetization and move towards cashless economy.

Impacting businesses Digital India is likely to have a significant impact on the profitability and operations of business. Through adoption of digital technologies, companies can consolidate documentation, automate processes and have access to efficient and cheaper ICT capabilities. While the benefits will be realised in years to come, some of the key areas of impact are likely to be:

• Increasing profitability: In India, adoption of advanced business digital technologies can lead to increase in revenues by up to 27%, increase in employment by up to 84% and enhanced access to international markets by up to 65% for small and medium business (SMBs). Digital infrastructure can also help leveraging technologies like telepresence that can reduce the need for business travel and result in cost savings • Higher productivity: Increased levels of digital technology-use under can improve employee satisfaction and collaboration, leading to a more productive workforce. In India, it is estimated that employees in SMBs with advanced digital engagement are 8.7 times more likely to collaborate than offline businesses. • Ease of doing business: The government has taken several measures to improve ease of doing business in India. Consequently, India has seen an improvement in the global ranking for ease of doing business. Services such as eBiz portal, KYC and other e-governance initiatives

Impacting the environment The Digital India project through the use of next generation technologies will help in reducing carbon footprint and provide several environmental benefits. Some of the key areas of impact are likely to be:

1. Reducing carbon footprint: India has pledged to decrease its carbon emissions by 33% to 35% relative to its GDP from 2005 levels by 2030. The Digital India program is likely to have a positive contribution towards achieving these goals. Wide spread implementation of telepresence and cloud computing technology under Digital India will lead to reduction in carbon emissions. For example, telepresence can eliminate 20% of the business travel, leading to reduction in carbon emissions by 1.08 million tonnes globally. Use of cloud storage for documents will significantly reduce the consumption of natural resources like paper. 2. Energy efficiencies and waste management: India is the fifth-largest producer of e-waste, discarding approximately 1.8 million tonnes of e-waste each year. Under Digital India adoption of ICT solutions such as waste collection automation and waste management information and prognostics are expected to considerably reduce e-waste. Using Digital infrastructure that is developed under the digital India program, city municipalities will be able to better manage the collection and disposal of solid waste and sewage. Several cities have started the deployment of pilot solutions for waste management in cities. 3. Forestry and Agriculture: Digital India can prevent deforestation by increasing the use of digital solutions in the coming few years. For example, Google in collaboration with University of Maryland and the UN Environment has developed Global Forest Watch 2.0 to prevent deforestation. This tool uses satellite technology, data sharing and human networks to better manage forests. 4. Environment Monitoring: Availability of digital infrastructure across various locations along with sensors and customized applications will help provide better information related to environmental challenges like pollution, climate change, weather monitoring etc. This can help local governments react to local issues (like traffic congestions, high levels of pollution etc.) in real time.

Challenges

The Digital India programme is facing a number of challenges.

Infrastructure development An underlying factor of the Digital India initiative is the requirement of consistent high-quality telecom connectivity and expeditious roll-out of telecom infrastructure across India. A right of way (RoW) permission is required to build telecom infrastructure across all Indian states. However, state departments delay RoW permissions and also levy abnormally high RoW charges, including fees imposed by various authorities other than charges prescribed under telecom licences. Other than these charges, getting RoW permissions from various agencies such as the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Ministry of Railways and Border Roads Organisation has been a big challenge. The Government of India should standardise timelines and RoW charges across India and should develop a digital platform, with a provision for online payments, for requesting RoW from state authorities. This will help the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) track state departments’ adherence to approval timelines and payment of prescribed charges. Projects such as BharatNet, which aims to connect 2,50,000 gram panchayats, was started in the year 2011 and was intended to be complete in two years. As of 2016, under 40% of the target was achieved. The biggest challenge in its implementation was ensuring that the point of broadband in each panchayat was installed and functional. However, it was found that 67% of NOFN points were non-functional even at the pilot stage. Moreover, a field survey related to locating fibre and drawing up the map for laying out fibre from block to panchayat took one and a half years, while the development of electronics for NOFN took another year. Another issue was the lack of adequate electricity in rural areas. This meant that the electronics which were used had to be robust enough to work in that environment. While BharatNet has tried to address the issue of backhaul to rural areas, last mile connectivity through various means still remains a challenge. The lack of viable business models in these areas is still a problem. Initiatives such as the Sanchar Kranti Yojana (SKY), undertaken by the Government of Chhattisgarh, is trying to address business viability issues. The issue of electricity and its custodianship in rural areas goes hand in hand. Security, theft and first-line maintenance of equipment are making the network unusable for any meaningful service delivery. Other challenges include low spectrum availability, which in Indian metros is about a tenth of that in cities in developed countries. This has resulted in major roadblocks in providing high- speed data services to citizens. Moreover, public Wi-Fi penetration remains low. Globally, there is one Wi-Fi hotspot for every 150 citizens. For India to reach this level of penetration, over 8 million hotspots will be required, of which only about 31,000 hotspots are currently vailable.

Data security

With the proliferation of cloud-based services such as DigiLocker and the recent spurt in cybercrime, data security has emerged as a major challenge. This calls for the implementation of an integrated cyber security related policy at the national level and strengthening of the capacity of the government at each level. The government will have to provide a benchmark that specifies what kind of minimal measures in cyber security have to be taken by each and every entity. The entire architecture should be designed to ensure proper authentication is carried out for every document uploaded online by citizens.Additionally, there should be a mechanism to ensure that these documents are available to the right users at any time and with the right authentication. Citizens and government institutions also need to be educated in the cyber security domain so that they can understand the risks involved when undertaking electronic transactions and other cyber activities.

Partnerships The Digital India programme has been hampered by contracting challenges. Challenges such as skill, experience and technical capabilities have been responsible for several delayed projects which were assigned to PSUs. Several requests for proposals (RFPs) are not taken up by competent private sector organisations as they are not commercially viable. These projects require high capital investments during the implementation phase and negative cash flows on and after the go-live of the projects. This leads to a negative cash flow business model, leading to the creation of a high-riskinvestment segment. In addition, corporations have to tacklelong and complex regulatory processes of the Central and state governments on their own.

Digital literacy Making citizens aware of the Digital India programme and its benefits is one of the biggest challenges. This is because 12 crore of the 16.8 crore rural households in India have no computers and are unlikely to have digitally literate persons. However, this is being offset with the exponential increase in the number of mobile phones. Most Indian consumers indicated that the lack of awareness about Internet services was the main reason for not using them. The non-availability of digital services in local languages is also a major concern. There should be adequate awareness building for people living in rural areas so that they can be a part of digital India and reap the benefits of the Internet.

Digital payments in India Digital payments are facing challenges on many fronts. • Prohibiting transaction costs levied on the use of debit/credit cards, which include service charges and interchange fees, is a major concern which deters merchants from using digital payments. • India lacks financial literacy (financial awareness along with money management and financial planning) and is ranked 15th on the Financial Literacy Index with a score of 59 by the International Journal of Management and Research. • Digital literacy is also a concern as a large chunk of the rural population is not aware of the features and benefits of using digital payments, smartphones and credit/ debit cards.

• Trust and security in the usage of digital payments in both urban and rural areas is a matter of concern, with an increasing number of fraud and cyberattacks. According to a report by CERT-In, the number of security incidents increased from 49,455 in 2015 to 50,362 in 2016. • The Internet is an essential tool for the growth of digital payments. India is currently at the 89th position in terms average Internet speed globally. While there are a total of 1,127 million telecom subscribers, only 392 million Internet users exist. • The lack of regional languages on applications acts as an entry-level barrier for citizens of India. Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) supports only 12 languages including English, whereas there are 22 national languages excluding English. E-education – SWAYAM(Study Webs of Active–Learning for Young Aspiring Minds) A number of challenges are being faced by the SWAYAM scheme. • The quality and type of courses on SWAYAM must be maintained. This will help maintain the interest of learners and other educational institutions. • The courses should be made mandatory for students. Students should also be rewarded with credits on successful course completion. The credits earned should be recognised by other educational institutions. • There has been extensive promotion of SWAYAM on both mainstream media and social media platforms to on-boardmore learners. • Other challenges include insufficient infrastructure, low digital literacy and slow Internet speed. • Aadhaar enrolment, particularly in remote areas, and Aadhaar seeding in bank accounts defines the strength of the Aadhaar initiative. • Further, given their federal structure, state governments too need to embrace this governance reform; the passage of state Aadhaar Acts is a step in that direction. • The challenges that may emerge post the judicial verdict on Aadhaar and privacy would need to be addressed. • From a citizen’s point of view, challenges of network connectivity and last mile delivery hinder active participation. • Further, there need to be policies and laws that safeguard against potential risks and threat of loss and/or breach of this data. • Lastly, an IT ecosystem that is interoperable across systems needs to be developed to provide for the intelligent use of Aadhaar and pave the way for beneficiary eligibility and entitlement.

E-health: Transformation of the healthcare industry Currently, India has a vast number of IT systems in the healthcare sector. Large hospitals and clinics have implemented their own IT systems, which are either custom developed applications or implementations of packaged off-the-shelf health/hospital information systems. There are also several large government IT systems within the healthcare sector in India, including Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS), HMIS, HIS, supply chain management for drugs and vaccines, Integrated Disease Surveillance Project (IDSP) and Revised National Tuberculosis Programme (RNTCP). However, these systems were designed at different points of time to address some very specific needs. Their designs were focused solely on meeting functional requirements, thus making them islands of information.

This has led to the following challenges: • Absence of a national platform for storing EHRs of patients • Healthcare information is in silos and is not shareable, leading to multiplication in cost of gathering and storing data • Absence of an integrated mechanism for health-related reporting and decision making because of incorrect and incomplete data • Duplication of healthcare expenses by patients and lack of a mechanism to track a beneficiary’s life cycle health record

Attacking the digital divide: Public Internet access programme Common Service Centres (CSCs) 2.0 The Common Service Centres (CSCs) scheme, originally designed to deliver a range of G2C, B2C and social sector services to residents and businesses in rural areas at affordable costs through 1 lakh front-end delivery outlets, is being revamped through the launch of CSC 2.0 with the target of a CSC in each gram panchayat. The focus of CSC 2.0 is to have a CSC in each gram panchayat as well as one CSC within every 5 km of each other, with delivery of standardised services across the nation utilising the various services and back-end infrastructure already made available such as State Data Centres and State Wide Area Networks, as well as other infrastructure projects planned under the Digital India programme such as BharatNet/NOFN. Based on CSC 1.0, there should be a consistent number and quality of services available at each state/UT, with the same branding used across the nation. CSCs should be viewed not as ‘service delivery channels’ but as ‘residents’ interaction channels’. As a new service delivery point, ‘telecom towers’ with sufficient infrastructure may be explored as well. CSCs can be used to eradicate poverty by offering financial inclusion services such as assisted micro finance application channels for MSMEs and financial literacy campaigns about financial products and services. Post offices India has the largest postal network in the world with over 1.5 lakh post offices, of which over 1.39 lakh are in the rural areas. This huge network in rural India presents a great opportunity to provide residents and institutions with services in cost- and time-effective ways. This has been taken cognisance of in the Digital India programme and a total of 1.5 lakh post offices are proposed to be converted into multi-service centres. The Department of Post is the nodal department that will be implementing this scheme. This department is already delivering services under the Digital India programme. The success of the Digital India programme depends on the awareness of the residents and institutions about different government services being delivered at points of digital presence. Post offices should be utilised for promotion, publicity and marketing of these government service Services through retail shops, fair price shops and telecom towers India has about 14 million retail outlets.26 Most of them are small in size and cater to people in their vicinity. With such unparalleled penetration, these retail shops present huge opportunities

to deliver G2C and financial services with government support on capacity building of outlet representatives. Many of these retail shops have already been working as mobile, Internet and direct-to-home (DTH) recharge points for their respective service providers. These retail shops can be provided with a single integrated mobilebased platform to offer G2C/B2C services and other services based on the needs of residents and institutions.

Digital India initiatives

Aadhar: is a 12-digit unique identity number that can be obtained by residents of India, based on their biometric and demographic data. The data is collected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a statutory authority established in January 2009 by the government of India, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, following the provisions of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, benefits and services) Act, 2016 In September 2018, the top court upheld the validity of the Aadhaar system

Bharat Net

Vision

BharatNet is a project of national importance to establish, by 2017, a highly scalable network infrastructure accessible on a non-discriminatory basis, to provide on demand, affordable broadband connectivity of 2 Mbps to 20 Mbps for all households and on demand capacity to all institutions, to realise the vision of Digital India, in partnership with States and the private sector. The entire project is being funded by Universal service Obligation Fund (USOF), which was set up for improving telecom services in rural and remote areas of the country. The objective is to facilitate the delivery of e-governance, e-health, e-education, e-banking, Internet and other services to the rural India.

Implementation

The project is a Centre-State collaborative project, with the States contributing free Rights of Way for establishing the Optical Fibre Network. The three-phase implementation of the BharatNet project is as follows

The first phase envisages providing one lakh gram panchayats with broadband

connectivity by laying underground optic fibre cable (OFC) lines by Decmeber 2017.

The second phase will provide connectivity to all 2,50,500 gram panchayats in the

country using an optimal mix of underground fiber, fiber over power lines, radio and

satellite media. It is to be completed by March 2019. For success in phase-2, which will

also involve laying of OFC over electricity poles, the participation of states will be

important. This is a new element of the BharatNet strategy as the mode of connectivity

by aerial OFC has several advantages, including lower cost, speedier implementation,

easy maintenance and utilization of existing power line infrastructure. The last mile

connectivity to citizens was proposed to be provided creating Wi-Fi hotspots in gram

panchayats

In the third phase from 2019 to 2023, state-of-the-art, future-proof network, including

fiber between districts and blocks, with ring topology to provide redundancy would be

created.

As on 31.12.2017, the status of implementation of BharatNet is as under:-

- No. of GPs where OFC laying is completed : 1,09,926 GPs

- Optical Fibre Cable laid : 2,54,895 km

- Broadband Connectivity provided in GPs : 1,01,370 GPs

National Knowledge Network

National Knowledge Network (NKN) project is aimed at establishing a strong and robust Indian network which will be capable of providing secure and reliable connectivity. Globally, frontier research and innovation are shifting towards multidisciplinary and collaborative paradigm and require substantial communication and computational power. In India, NKN with its multi-gigabit capability aims to connect all universities, research institutions, libraries, laboratories, healthcare and agricultural institutions across the country to address such paradigm shift. The leading mission oriented agencies in the fields of nuclear, space and defence research are also part of NKN. By facilitating the flow of information and knowledge, the network addresses the critical issue of access and creates a new paradigm of collaboration to enrich the research efforts in the country. The network design is based on a proactive approach that takes into account the future requirements and new possibilities that this infrastructure may unfold, both in terms of usage and perceived benefits. This will bring about a knowledge revolution that will be instrumental in transforming society and promoting inclusive growth.

GI Cloud (Meghraj)

Q. Recently, the government of India has launched a new initiative called MeghRaj. What is this MeghRaj? [A] Its a new Monsoon prediction system [B]It’s a new project related to Cloud Computing [C]It’s a new service under Department of Posts [D]It’s a new scheme for India’s Rainfed areas

It’s a new project related to Cloud Computing MeghRaj, technically called GI Cloud is a new project launched by the Government of India to harness

the benefits of Cloud Computing. The GI Cloud facility would ensure optimum utilization of the infrastructure and speed up the development and deployment of eGovernance applications. It will also help the departments to procure ICT services on demand. The National Informatics Centre, NIC is providing Cloud services under the initiative MeghRaj

eSign or Digital Signature eSign is an online electronic signature service which can be integrated with service delivery applications via an API to facilitate an eSign user to digitally sign a document. Using authentication of the eSign user through e-KYC service, online electronic signature service is facilitated

Save cost and time e-KYC based authentication

Improve user convenience Mandatory e-KYC id

Easily apply Digital Signature Biometric or OTP based authentication

Verifiable Signatures and Signatory Flexible and fast integration with application

Legally recognized Suitable for individual business and Government

Managed by Licensed CAs API subscription Model

Privacy concerns addressed Assured Integrity with complete audit trail

Simple Signature verification Immediate destruction of keys after usage

Short validity certificates No concerns regarding key storage and key protection

JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) Trinity for Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT): JAM (short for Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) trinity refers to the government of India initiative to link Jan Dhan accounts, Mobile numbers and Aadhar cards of Indians to plug the leakages of government subsidies. What is JAM Trinity? o JAM Trinity stands for Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile. o JAM Trinity refers to the consolidation of Prime Minister Jan Dhan Yojana(PMJDY), Aadhaar and Mobile connectivity (JAM). o It is an initiative of Indian Government to link Jan Dhan accounts, Mobile numbers and Aadhaar cards of Indians to avoid the leakages of government subsidies. o It is one of the biggest reforms regarding direct subsidy transfer in terms of cash. o It can effectively solve the problems of corruption and lack of transparency in government subsidy programme. o Aadhaar will help in biometric identification of citizens with accuracy, Jan Dhan accounts and mobile numbers will help the direct transfer of cash in the accounts. It will help to make Indian subsidy programme corruption free. o Cash transfer through JAM can improve the financial condition of poor people in India, and can reduce leakages.

o Implementing Direct Benefit Transfer(DBT) in real time through JAM remains one of the government's key objectives, and significant progress has been made in past years in this direction

Digital Payments The Digital India programme is a flagship programme of the Government of India with a vision

to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. “Faceless,

Paperless, Cashless” is one of professed role of Digital India.

As part of promoting cashless transactions and converting India into less-cash society, various

modes of digital payments are available

UMANG

UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance) is envisaged to make e-

governance . It is developed by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and

National e-Governance Division (NeGD) to drive Mobile Governance in India.

UMANG provides a single platform for all Indian Citizens to access pan India e-Gov services

ranging from Central to Local Government bodies and other citizen centric services.

UMANG intends to provide major services offered by Central and State Government

departments, Local bodies and other utility services from private organizations. It provides a

unified approach where citizens can install one application to avail multiple government

services.

UMANG service has been made available on multiple channels like mobile application, web, IVR

and SMS which can be accessed through smartphones, feature phones, tablets and desktops.

UMANG has been created with a thought to add convenience to your lifestyle. UMANG will

revolutionize the way how an Indian citizen avails government services today, because it

leverages the current accelerated internet and smartphone penetration in our country.

Common Service Centres (CSC)

CSCs are physical facilities for delivering Government of India e-Services to rural and remote locations where availability of computers and Internet was negligible or mostly absent. They are multiple-services-single-point model for providing facilities for multiple transactions at a single geographical location.

CSCs are the access points for delivery of essential public utility services, social welfare schemes, healthcare, financial, education and agriculture services, apart from host of B2C services to citizens in rural and remote areas of the country. It is a pan-India network catering to regional, geographic, linguistic and cultural diversity of the country, thus enabling the Government's mandate of a socially, financially and digitally inclusive society.

Common Services Centre (CSC) programme is an initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY), Government of India. CSCs are the access points for delivery of various electronic services to villages in India, thereby contributing to a digitally and financially inclusive society.

Applicant should be a village youth above 18 years of age

Applicant must have passed the 10th level examination from a recognized board as minimum level of educational qualification.

Applicant should be fluent in reading and writing the local dialect and should also have basic knowledge of English language

Applicant should have a valid Aadhaar number.

National Digital Literacy Mission – NDLM

NIELIT is one of the National Level Certifying Agency for Govt. of India's 'National Digital

Literacy Mission’ (NDLM). The mission of NDLM scheme is to provide digital literacy to every

Indian. Making one person in every family digitally literate is one of the integral components

of the Prime Minister’s vision of “Digital India”.

The Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (DISHA) or National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM) Scheme has

been formulated to impart IT training to 52.5 lakh persons, including Anganwadi and ASHA

workers and authorised ration dealers in all the States/UTs across the country so that the non-

IT literate citizens are trained to become IT literate so as to enable them to actively and

effectively participate in the democratic and developmental process and also enhance their

livelihood.

PMGDISHA The recent launch of the PMGDISHA puts an end to digital divide by educating the poor on digital skills. The Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan, a project launched under the Skill India scheme is an initiative that aims to impart digital literacy to rural citizens across the country. It was announced by the PM earlier this week at the inauguration of a building at IIT Gandhinagar campus. Here is all you need to know about the scheme.

Motive of PMGDISHA

Modi claims that when he talks about 'Digital India', he is not referring to the rich, but to the poor. Keeping this in mind, the scheme's purpose is to provide quality technical and digital training- both theoretically and practically- to the large number of youths from the backward or rural areas to make them equally digitally educated as the rich youth, and to create economical, social and cultural opportunities for them.

Goal of PMGDISHA

The project is expected to be one of the largest initiatives of the country with an overall target of training 6 crore students till the financial year, 2019. In order to be able to attain this large reach, the government has accepted 250,000 Gram Panchayats to register at least 200-300 candidates each. The ultimate aim is to span the gap between the rural and urban youth.

How does it work?

The PMGDISHA has a network of helping hands who work together to provide to the underprivileged sections of the society, to spread digital empowerment amongst marginalised communities and Panchayati constituencies, and to educate at least one person from each authorised household.

The India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS)

As envisaged under Digital India Programme, seeks to incentivize establishment of 48,300 seats in respect of BPO/ITES operations across the country.

It is distributed among each State in proportion of State's population with an outlay of Rs. 493 Crore. This would help in capacity building in smaller cities in terms of infra & manpower and would become basis for next wave of IT/ITES led growth. Salient Features:

1. Financial Support: Up to 50% of expenditure incurred on BPO/ITES operations towards capital expenditure (CAPEX) and/or operational expenditure (OPEX) on admissible items, subject to an upper ceiling of Rs. 1 Lakh/Seat.

2. Special incentives toward employment of women & specially enabled persons. 3. Incentive for generating employment beyond target & wider dispersal within state

including rural areas. 4. Encouragement for local entrepreneurs. 5. Special consideration for Hilly states of HP, J&K and UK.

This scheme has potential to create employment opportunities of around 1.5 lakh direct jobs considering three shift operations. It may also create good number of indirect jobs.

e-Biz

eBiz is being implemented by Infosys Technologies Limited (Infosys) under the guidance and aegis of Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India. The focus of eBiz is to improve the business environment in the country by enabling fast and efficient access to Government-to-Business (G2B) services through an online portal. This will help in reducing unnecessary delays in various regulatory processes required to start and run businesses.

e-trade The Department of Commerce is pursuing the project eTRADE, the purpose of which is to facilitate foreign trade in India by way of promoting effective and efficient delivery of services by various regulatory / facilitating agencies involved in foreign trade so as to enable the trade to avail services from these agencies in online environment.

Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is a name given to the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things, cloud computing. and cognitive computing. Industry 4.0 is commonly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution. Industry 4.0 fosters what has been called a "smart factory". Within modular structured smart factories, cyber-physical systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make decentralized decisions. Over the Internet of Things, cyber-physical

systems communicate and cooperate with each other and with humans in real-time both internally and across organizational services offered and used by participants of the value chain.

MyGov

MyGov is a citizen engagement platform founded by the Government of India to promote the active participation of Indian citizens in their country's governance and development. It is aimed at creating a common platform for Indian citizens to "crowd source governance ideas from citizens". Its users discuss and contribute to various government projects and plans. It also allows users to upload documents in various formats. The website is hosted and managed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC). Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that the aim was to reduce the long gap developed between the electorate and the Executive after being elected.

In the first week of August 2014, MyGov received 100,000 registered users, barely two weeks after its initiation. Google became the first multinational firm to collaborate with MyGov. Shortly before his first address to the nation through All India Radio, it was announced that ideas and questions for the Prime Minister submitted to MyGov may be responded to in subsequent radio addresses.

India has jumped 22 places to break into the top 100 of the United Nation’s E-Government Index 2018. The E-Government survey is released by the United Nations in every two years. The 2018 edition: 'Gearing E-Government to Support Transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies' was launched on July 19, 2018. India, which was ranked 118 in 2014, jumped 11 places to be ranked 96 in 2018. The jump shows how digital technologies and innovations are impacting the public sector and changing people’s everyday lives.

What is UN E-Governance Index?

The E-Government Development Index (EGDI) is a composite index based on the weighted average of three normalised indices: Telecommunications Infrastructure Index (TII): The index is based on data provided by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Human Capital Index (HCI): It is based on data provided by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Online Service Index (OSI: It is based on data collected from an independent survey questionnaire, conducted by UNDESA, which assesses the national online presence of all 193 United Nations Member States.

It mainly assesses e-government development at the national level. It measures countries’ use of information and communications technologies to deliver public services. The Index captures the scope and quality of online services, status of telecommunication infrastructure and existing human capacity.

Direct Benefit Transfer Direct Benefit Transfer or DBT is an attempt to change the mechanism of transferring subsidies launched by Government of India on 1 January 2013. This program aims to transfer subsidies directly to the people through their bank accounts. It is hoped that crediting subsidies into bank accounts will reduce leakages, delays, etc

National Child Labour Project

Student Scholarship

LPG subsidy

DigiLocker

DigiLocker is a "digital locker" service operated by the Government of India that enables Indian citizens to store certain official documents on the cloud. The service is aimed towards reducing the need to carry physical documents, and is part of the government's Digital India initiative.

4 GB of storage space is offered to users to store identification card issued by government agencies, education certificates, PAN cards, driving license, vehicle ownership documents and some other documents.

Users need to possess an Aadhar card to use DigiLocker. For sign-up, the Aadhar card number and the one-time password sent to the Aadhar-associated mobile number, need to be entered. For later log-ins, the user can set their own password or link the account to Facebook or Google logins

National digital library

The National Digital library of India is a project under Ministry of Human Resource Development, India. The objective is to integrate several national and international digital libraries in one single web-portal. The NDLI provides free of cost access to many books in English and the Indian languages

Shodhganga :

a reservoir of Indian theses is a digital repository of theses and dissertations submitted to Indian universities. It is maintained by INFLIBNET Centre which is an autonomous Inter-University Centre of the University Grants Commission (UGC) of India, was initially located in the campus of Gujarat University, Ahmedabad. As of January 2013, INFLIBNET Centre has moved to its new institutional building at infocity, Gandhinagar, capital of Gujarat. As on 4 October 2016, as many as 293 universities in India have signed MoUs with the INFLIBNET Centre to participate in the Shodhganga project. A further 13 centrally funded technical institutions have also signed MoUs with the Centre to participate in the Shodhganga project. The full text of all the documents submitted to Shodhganga are available to read and to download in open access to the academic community worldwide. The repository has a collection of 2,10,661 theses and 6123 synopses. The top five universities in terms of the numbers of theses submitted are Panjab University, Aligarh Muslim University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Karnataka University and Anna University. The Shodhganga repository was created consequent on the University Grants Commission making it mandatory through regulations issued in June 2009 for all universities to submit soft copies of PhD theses and MPhil dissertations to the UGC for hosting in the INFLIBNET.

Those universities that have signed MoUs with INFLIBNET Centre are required to identify a senior academic to serve as a University Coordinator to liaise with the University and the Centre. Responsibilities of the Coordinator include timely submission of soft copies of PhD theses submitted to the University to Shodhganga and to verify the correctness and completeness of these soft copies.

It has been observed that "Shodhganga is an important Indian initiative and will facilitate open access to Indian theses and dissertations to the world academic community. Online availability of electronic theses through centrally maintained digital repositories will not only ensure easy access and archiving of these but will also help in raising the quality and standard of research."

The INFLIBNET Centre is also maintaining another repository known by the name Shodhgangotri which is a repository of the synopses and research proposals of the PhD programmes in Indian universities. It has been described as a repository of the details of Indian Research in Progresses.

ShodhGangotri

Under the initiative called “ShodhGangotri”, research scholars / research supervisors in universities are requested to deposit electronic version of approved synopsis submitted by research scholars to the universities for registering themselves for the Ph.D programme. The repository on one hand, would reveal the trends and directions of research being conducted in Indian universities, on the other hand it would avoid duplication of research. Synopsis in “ShodhGangotri” would later be mapped to full-text theses in "ShodhGanga". As such, once the full-text thesis is submitted for a synopsis, a link to the full-text theses would be provided from ShodhGangotri to "ShodhGanga"

e-ShodhSindhu

Based on the recommendation of an Expert Committee, the MHRD has formed e-ShodhSindhu merging three consortia initiatives, namely UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, NLIST and INDEST-AICTE Consortium.The e-ShodhSindhu will continue to provide current as well as archival access to more than 15,000 core and peer-reviewed journals and a number of bibliographic, citation and factual databases in different disciplines from a large number of publishers and aggregators to its member institutions including centrally-funded technical institutions, universities and colleges that are covered under 12(B) and 2(f) Sections of the UGC Act.

Aims and Objectives

The main objective of the e-ShodhSindu: Consortia for Higher Education E-Resources is to provide access to qualitative electronic resources including full-text, bibliographic and factual databases to academic institutions at a lower rates of subscription. The major aims and objectives of the e-Shodh Sindhu are as follows:

Setting-up e-ShodhSindu: Consortia for Higher Education E-Resources by augmenting and strengthening activities and services offered by three MHRD-funded Consortia;

Develop a formidable collection of e-journals, e-journal archives and e-books on perpetual access basis;

Monitor and promote usage of e-resources in member universities, colleges and technical institutions in India through awareness and training programmes;

Provide access to subscription-based scholarly information (e-books and e-journals) to all educational institutions;

Provide access to scholarly content available in open access through subject portals and subject gateways;

Bridge digital divide and move towards an information-rich society;

Provide access to selected e-resources to additional institutions including open universities and MHRD-funded institutions that are not covered under existing consortia;

Take-up additional activities and services that require collaborative platform and are not being performed by existing Consortia; and

Moving towards developing a National Electronic Library with electronic journals and electronic books as its major building blocks.