Digital India

Digital India is the umbrella programme of various initiatives to make India a digitally empowered society. The initiatives under Digital India include all departments and ministries within its scope. Implementation is monitored and overseen by a Digital India Advisory group headed by the Ministry of Communications.

Vision Areas

The Digital India umbrella is centred on three vision areas viz. Digital Infrastructure; Digital Empowerment and Digital Governance.

Digital Infrastructure

This include availability of high speed internet for delivery of core services to citizens, banking accounts with mobile banking, access to common service centers, shareable private space on public cloud and safe cyberspace.

Digital Empowerment

This includes universal digital literacy; access to digital resources; availability of all government documents on cloud; participative governance via digital platforms and portability of entitlements through cloud.

Digital Governance

This includes access to services of all government departments through digital or online platforms; use of digital technology for governance, decision support systems and development.

Nine Pillars of Digital India

The above mentioned three vision areas have been further divided into nine pillars as follows:

• Broadband Highways
• Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity
• Public Internet Access Programme
• e-Governance: Reforming Government through Technology
• e-Kranti – Electronic Delivery of Services
• Information for All
• Electronics Manufacturing
• IT for Jobs
• Early Harvest Programmes
• To Know more about Nine pillars of Digital India

Each of them is briefly discussed as follows:

Broadband Highways

There are three components of broadband highways viz. Rural Broadband, Urban Broadband and National Information Infrastructure.

• Under rural, the government plans to connect all village panchayats by high speed broadband network.
• Under Urban Broadband, the government plans to leverage the Virtual Network Operators to provide service and infrastructure in urban areas.
• The National Information Infrastructure is to merge earlier digital infrastructure with latest and cloud based service infrastructure.

Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity

This includes to increase mobile network penetration in the country and spread the connectivity to all uncovered villages.

Public Internet Access Programme

This includes establishments of Common Service Centres and Post Offices as multi-service centres. The government plans to establish around 2.5 Lakh Common Service Centres i.e. one in each Gram Panchayat. Further, all the 1.5 Lakh post offices are to be converted into multi-service centres.

E-Governance: Reforming Government through Technology

This includes improvement and reform of governance using the digital technology. This includes the National E-Governance Plan: Simplification of forms, use of online platforms to get basic government documents and services, integration and improvisation of services such as UIDAI, Payment Gateway, Mobile Platform, Electronic Data Interchange etc.; use of databases instead of paper based manuals & registers; automation of workflow within the government, and grievance redressal via IT infrastructure. This includes more than 30 mission mode projects of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP).

E-Kranti

10 more missions were added to NeGP to call it E-Kranti. It is an important pillar of the Digital India programme. Some of these are:

• E-Education: This includes (1) connecting all schools with broadband and provides free Wi-Fi in secondary and senior secondary schools. (2) MOOCs –Massive Online Open Courses for E-education. The portal Swayam was launched as a part of this component.
• E-Healthcare: This includes medical consulation, online medical records and supply and pan-India exchange of patient information.
• Technology for Farmers: This includes real time price information, online ordering of inputs and online cash, loan and relief payment with mobile banking.
• Technology for Security: This includes leveraging the technology for emergency response, internal security and disaster management.
• Technology for Financial Inclusion: Increasing financial inclusion via 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

One of the pillars of Digital India is to increase access to information for citizens by promoting pen data platforms and open source programmes and applications.

Electronics Manufacturing

This includes making efforts towards achieving net zero imports in electronics items such as FABS, Set Top Boxes, VSATs, Mobiles, Consumer electronic and so on. Government support includes subsidies, tax sops and funds mobility for incubators, start-ups, clusters, skill development etc.

IT for Jobs

This includes to train students from smaller towns and villages for IT sector jobs.

Early Harvest Programmes

This includes several programmes such as mass messaging platforms and apps for spreading information about government programmes, E-greetings to replace government greetings, biometric attendances in government offices, Wi-Fi in all universities, public Wi-Fi spots, replacing books by E-Books, sms based disaster alerts, a national portal for Lost & Found children etc.