Digital India
Description
Digital India
Indian government’s Digital India programme is playing a revolutionary role in connecting India by bridging the rural and urban India divide. Its vision is to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy by providing broadband highways, universal access to mobile connectivity, public internet access programme, e-governance, e-Kranti, information for all, electronics manufacturing, IT for jobs and early harvest programmes.
According to the government, Digital India efforts are laid down to achieve results in two key focus areas:
a. Governance and Services on Demand
Digital India aims to integrate processes and information across departments and jurisdictions seamlessly so to help provide realtime services to citizens both on online and mobile platforms, digitally enable processes for businesses, creating a digitally enabled cashless economy and creating cloud-based repository for easy access for the citizens as well as better planning and decision-making with the help of GIS.
b. Digital Empowerment of Citizens
The programme aims to provide digital literacy and digital services to all citizens through universally accessible digital resources and services in several Indian languages and introduction of collaborative digital platforms, availability of all documents and certificates online and availability of all entitlements through cloud.
Key Initiatives
• Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS): AEPS is a payment service based on an individual’s Aadhaar card which enables the owner of the card to make financial transactions such as transfer funds, make payments, deposit cash, make withdrawals, etc.
• MyGov: It promotes participatory governance by providing citizens an opportunity to voice their opinions in policy making and recommendations.
• National Mission in Education through ICT: Under this mission, the government aims to use ICT interventions to bolster enrolment rates in higher education by creating a proper balance between the right content, undertaking research in imparting education and other critical areas, and increasing connectivity among other nations to share our progress and exchange of ideas.
• Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana: It provides access to services of financial nature at affordable rates to boost financial inclusivity and encourage savings. The services accessible under the PMJDY are savings accounts, loan services, pension, insurance, etc.
• SMART Cities: As part of the initiative 99 cities have been selected to address issues of pollution, increasing crime rates, congestions, poor living standards by creating better administrative and infrastructural systems through new technologies.
• E-Pathshala: The platform offers educational resources, including NCERT textbooks for classes 1-12, audio-visual resources by NCERT, periodicals, supplements, teacher training modules and a variety of other print and nonprint materials.
• E-Prison: This project envisions digitisation and integration of all activities that are related to prison and prisoner management for jails through an application suite
• Farmer Portal: The portal is designed to be a one-stop destination to gain relevant information related to agriculture, risk management, animal husbandry, aquaculture, weather, programmes and schemes.
• Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN): The network helps the government follow financial transactions and helps the tax-payers with GST registration, maintenance of tax details, etc. Deep data analytics and AI tools are being used to crackdown on GST input tax credit, refund and other frauds and to identify those trying to game the system. Invoice and input tax credit matching is being done wherein returns with mismatch of more than 10 percent or above a threshold are identified and pursued.
• Khoya Paya: It is an initiative under Digital India to engage citizens to inform and exchange information on children who are missing and found. The Khoya Paya portal can be linked to the CCTNS project to help apprehend criminals as well as solve cases of missing minors.
• Kisan Suvidha: The mobile application disseminates relevant information to farmers regarding weather, market prices, plant protection, inputs, weather alerts, go-downs and storages and market-related information such as conducive markets, market rates, quantity demands, etc.
• National Knowledge Network (NKN): It is a pan-India network with an aim to help in connecting India’s universities, libraries, labs, research institutes across the country to improve inter-communication, stimulate research and create next-gen apps and services.
• Online Labs (OLABS): OLABS is a virtual learning platform, created to help students conduct over 130 virtual lab practical to grasp concepts in Chemistry, Physics, Biology from class 9 to 12, and lessons in English and Maths for class 9 and 10. The experiments are a mix of interactive stimulations, animations and lab videos which can be accessed anywhere.
• Project Monitoring Website for E-courts: E-court’s project monitoring website has been created to aid courts with automated decision-making and decision-support system.
• Swachh Bharat App: The app uses AI to ascertain the beneficiary through facial recognition software and digitally affirm the state of toilets, and cross-checks photos with the GPS coordinates shared by the smartphones.
• Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG): Developed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and National e-Governance Division (NeGD) to promote e-governance in India
• Government e-Marketplace (GeM): It enables government departments and public sector entities to procurement common use goods and services.
• Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS): It aims at creating a system that is comprehensively integrated to enhance the efficiency of policing through a creation of a nation-wide networking infrastructure for the evolution of IT-enabled highly efficient tracking system around the investigation and detection of crimes and criminals.
