(a) and (b): The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India has initiated the ‘Digital India’ programme with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. Digital India is an umbrella programme that covers multiple projects of various Central Ministries/Departments & States/UTs. Each project has its own budgetary requirement and accordingly project-plan has been charted out by the implementing departments.
The Digital India programme is centred on three key vision areas namely Digital Infrastructure as a Core Utility to Every Citizen, Governance and Services on Demand and Digital Empowerment of Citizens. Digital India aims to provide the much needed thrust to nine pillars of growth areas that is (i) Broadband Highways, (ii) Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity, (iii) Public Internet Access Programme, (iv) e-Governance – Reforming Government through Technology, (v) e-Kranti– Electronic delivery of services, (vi) Information for All, (vii) Electronics Manufacturing – Target NET ZERO Imports, (viii) IT for Jobs and (ix) Early Harvest Programmes.
(c): The present status of some of the key initiatives undertaken under Digital India progamme is as follows:
Vision Area 1: Digital Infrastructure as a Utility to Every Citizen
• BharatNet: BharatNet is an ambitious initiative to trigger a broadband revolution in rural areas. This project is being implemented by Department of Telecommunications. BharatNet aims to connect all the 2,50,000 Gram panchayats in the country and provide 100 Mbps connectivity to all gram panchayats (GPs). 3,01,154 Kms optical fiber has been laid connecting 1,21,652 Gram Panchayats. 1,16,411 Gram Panchayats are ready for service.
• Aadhaar: Aadhaar provides 12 digit biometric and demographic based identity that is unique, lifelong, online and authenticable. Further to give statutory backing to Aadhaar ‘The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016’ was notified on 26th March 2016. Over 122.91+ crore residents have been enrolled.
• Common Services Centre (CSC): The Common Services Centres, which are kiosks for delivery of G2C Services, are being opened at each of 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats(GP). So far, 3.05 Lakh Common Services Centre are active and transacting for delivery of eServices; Out of this, 2.10 lakh are at GP level. Along with other services, CSCs are providing services related to Banking and Finance to rural citizens. Over 300 digital services are being offered by these CSCs and formal and informal employment for 12 lakh young men and women in rural areas have been created.
• Meghraj and CSP: As part of the Digital India program, Government of India embarked upon an ambitious initiative known as MeghRaj, to utilize and harness the benefits of Cloud Computing. This will ensure accelerating the delivery of e-services in the country and optimizing ICT spending of the Government. To fast track the adoption of cloud computing MeitY, Government of India has empaneled cloud service offerings of the 13 Cloud Service Providers under different deployment models viz. Public Cloud, Virtual Private Cloud and Government Community Cloud.
• Digital locker: Digital Locker provides an ecosystem with collection of repositories and gateways for issuers to upload the documents in the digital repositories. 2.22 crore documents have been uploaded by 1.66 crore registered user of DigiLocker. 105 Issuers and 30 Requestor organizations have been on-boarded
• Open Govt. Data Platform: Open Government Data (OGD) Platform is a platform for supporting Open Data initiative of Government of India. It intends to increase transparency in the functioning of Government and also open avenues for many more innovative usages of Government Data to give different perspective. Currently, 241,411 resources under 4,438 catalogs published by 142 Ministries/Departments (84 Central and 58 States/UTs Departments).
• eSign framework - Online Electronic Signature Service: eSign is an initiative for easy, efficient, and secure signing of electronic documents by an Aadhaar holder. Aadhaar holders (individuals, Government officials, corporate executives, etc.) can digitally sign an electronic document without having a hardware cryptographic device. Five agencies namely eMudhra Ltd., C-DAC, (n)Code Solutions, NSDL e-Governance Infrastructure Ltd. and Capricorn have been empanelled to offer e-Sign Services. Over 5.28+ crore eSign have been issued.
Vision Area 2: Governance & Services on Demand
• eTaal: eTaal is a web portal for dissemination of e-Transactions statistics of National and State level e-Governance Projects including Mission Mode Projects. It receives transaction statistics from web based applications periodically on near real time basis. More than 3143 crore transactions have been recorded for 3645 services since January 2018.
• Direct Benefit Transfers(DBT): 433 schemes of 56 Ministries/ Departments are there on DBT platform. An amount of more than Rs. 5.37 Lakh Crore has been transferred through DBT and the Ministries/Departments have reported savings of Rs 90,000 crore in last three years due to implementation of schemes in DBT mode.
• E-Office: It is a Digital Workplace Solution which aims to usher in efficient, effective and transparent inter-government and intra-government transactions and processes. NIC has implemented e-Office Portal in 149 Central Government (Ministries/Departments) and 122 State Governments (Secretariats/District Administrations).
• Government e-Market Place (GeM): To facilitate on line procurement of Goods & Services required by various Government Departments / Organizations / PSUs, Government e-Marketplace (GeM) has been implemented. GeM will enhance transparency, efficiency and speed in public procurement. Presently, GeM is being used by various Departments/Ministries of Central Govt and States/UTs. 1,45,106 Sellers and Services providers are registered on the portal. Also others Services are registered namely Transport, Scanning/Digitization, IT Manpower, FMS etc. There are 501,144 Products and Services 4,917+ are available on the portal. 9,89,914 orders processed with value of Rs 14,664 Crore.
• Jeevan Pramaan: Digital Life Certificate for Pensioners scheme known as Jeevan Pramaan envisages to digitize the whole process of securing the life certificate. It is a biometric enabled digital service for pensioners. With this initiative, the pensioner is no more required to physically present himself or herself in front of disbursing agency or the certification authority. Over 2.34 crore pensioners have registered themselves to avail of this facility for their life certificates.
• Online Registration System(ORS)/eHospital: Online Registration System (ORS) under eHospital includes online appointment and registration by new patients, viewing of lab reports, checking the status of blood availability and integration with payment gateway (PayGov). Till date, 20.27 lakh online appointments have been made in 190 hospitals through ORS.
• National Scholarship Portal: National Scholarships Portal (NSP) has been developed as a one-stop solution to implement end-to-end disbursement of the scholarship to the beneficiaries. The process includes student registration, application, approval and disbursement. Over 1.26 crore applications have been submitted. There are 52 registered schemes from 14 Ministries/Departments.
• NCOG- GIS Applications: National Centre of Geo-informatics (NCoG) project, is a GIS platform developed for sharing, collaboration, location based analytics and decision support system for Departments. So far, 85 applications across various domains are operational.
• Unified Mobile Application for New-Age Governance (UMANG): UMANG has been developed as a single mobile platform to deliver major Government services with Core Platform integrated with Aadhaar, DigiLocker, PayGov, Rapid Assessment System (RAS) etc. About 325 services from 59 departments and 17 States are already available on UMANG and the count is increasing day by day.
• Rapid Assessment System (RAS): Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has developed Rapid Assessment System (RAS) for continuous feedback for e-services delivered by Government of India and State Governments. This system has multiple channels for receiving feedback and is backed by analytics. These analytics will help integrated departments for continuous system improvement and better governance.
Vision Area 3: Digital Empowerment of Citizens
• MyGov: MyGov is a first-of-its-kind citizen engagement platform for participatory governance in India. MyGov aims to facilitate a dialogue between citizens and Government, bringing citizens closer to the Government and bringing the Government closer to the citizens it serves, via this platform. Presently, over 71 lakh users are registered with MyGov, participating in various activities hosted on MyGov platform. MyGov activities are structured under 64 groups consisting of 795 tasks, 791 discussions, 246 Polls/Surveys and 184 talks.
• National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM)/Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (DISHA): Government of India has implemented two Schemes for digital literacy namely ‘National Digital Literacy Mission’ (NDLM) with a target of training 10 lakh persons and Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (DISHA) with a target of 42.5 lakh persons covering one person per family. These schemes were implemented concurrently across the country and a total of 53.67 lakh candidates have been trained and certified.
• Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyaan(PMGDISHA): The Government has approved a new scheme titled “Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA)” in February, 2017 to usher in digital literacy in rural India by covering 6 Crore rural households (one person per household). So far, more than 1.64 crore candidates have been enrolled, out of which training has been imparted to more than 1.60 crore candidates and 85.97 lakh candidates have been certified.
• Information Security Education and Awareness (ISEA) Project: The Information Security Education and Awareness (ISEA) Project Phase-II was approved with an objective of capacity building in the area of Information Security, training of Government personnel and creation of mass Information Security awareness. So far, 28,069 candidates have been trained in various formal/non-formal courses and 6,341 Government officials have been trained in various short term courses in the area of Information Security.
Other Initiatives
? IT for Jobs
• 48,300 seats have been approved under India BPO scheme and over 38,855 seats have been allocated across 20 States and 2 UTs.
• 5000 seats have been approved for BPOs in North East and 2,185 seats have been allocated across 6 States in NER.
? Electronics Manufacturing
• 268 Investment proposals under Modified Specific Incentive Programmes (MSIPs) having a proposed investment of Rs. 62,985 crore have been so far received. 188 proposals with proposed investments of Rs. 40,922 crore have been approved.
• 23 applications (20 Greenfield EMCs and 3 Common Facility Centre in Brownfield EMCs) with project worth of Rs.3898 crore including Central Grant-in-aid of Rs.1577 crore for setting up of Electronics Manufacturing Clusters(EMC) have been accorded final approval in 15 states across the country.
(d) and (e): Yes, Sir. In one of the reported instance, e-grarn Digital (website - egramdigital.co.in) was misusing the Government flagship Digital India programme, for extorting money from citizens, across many States, for becoming State Partners and Distributors for fake scheme "Apka Angootha, Apka Bank" and duping citizens to make payments for biometric devices.
(f): Yes, Sir. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has issued directives to all Central Ministries/Departments and States/UTs to safeguard citizens from fraudulent activities carried out in the name of Government schemes.
********
Download PDF Files
