(a), (b) and (c): Yes, Sir. 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-based economy by ensuring digital access, digital inclusion, digital empowerment and bridging the digital divide. Under Digital India Programme, MeitY has effectively utilised Digital technologies to transform the lives of people while ensuring digital inclusion of all the segments. 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. Some of the key initiatives undertaken under Digital India programme are as follows:
• Common Services Centre (CSC): MeitY has initiated a project namely “Common Services Centre (CSC) 2.0” in August, 2015 under Digital India Programme, which envisages setting up of at least one CSC at Gram Panchayat (GP) to cover all the 2.5 lakh GPs across the country. Common Services Centres are internet enabled centres operated by local entrepreneur, called Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) and provide eServices to rural citizens. Over 350 digital services are being offered by these CSCs. The number of functional CSCs (Urban & Rural) across the Country is 3.64 Lakh, out of which 2.62 Lakh CSCs are functional at Gram Panchayat level.
• 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. To fast track the adoption of cloud computing MeitY, Government of India has empanelled 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. So far, 3.23 crore registered user of DigiLocker. 369 crore authentic documents have been issued. 144 Issuers and 42 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, 3,34,963 resources under 7,839 catalogs published by 162 Ministries/Departments.
• 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 3691 crore transactions have been recorded for 3,751 services since January 2019.
• 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. 2,99,544 Sellers and Services providers are registered on the portal. There are 14,85,806 Products and 19,415+ Services are available on the portal.
• 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 3.06 crore Digital Life certificates have been processed since 2014.
• 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, 30.79 lakh online appointments have been made in 237 Hospitals through ORS.
• 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, 497 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 490 services from 104 departments and 21 States are already available on UMANG platform.
• Soil Health Card: It has been developed to establish the national database on Soil Health and provide fertilizer and micro-nutrient suggestions for the soil to farmers. The system captures data at each stage of soil sample collection and testing to generate Soil Health Card in uniform format with local language interface for 22 languages.
• E-WayBill: It provides a self-service platform to consignors, consignees and transporters to generate e-Way Bill for movement of goods from one place to another. It provides multiple modes of generation including web, bulk upload, SMS, and Mobile App.
• 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 95 lakh users are registered with MyGov, participating in various activities hosted on MyGov platform. MyGov activities are structured under 64 groups consisting of 864 tasks, 816 discussions, 265 Polls/Surveys and 185 talks.
• 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). As on date, over 2.30 crore candidates have been trained under PMGDISHA scheme, out of which more than 1.69 crore candidates have been certified.
(d) and (e): Yes, Sir. Government has taken various initiatives to make Information Technology accessible to the people residing in rural, hilly and remote areas including state of West Bengal. Some of the key initiatives are as follows:
• Common Services Centre (CSC): MeitY has initiated a project namely “Common Services Centre (CSC) 2.0” in August, 2015 under Digital India Programme, which envisages setting up of at least one CSC at Gram Panchayat (GP) to cover all the 2.5 lakh GPs across the country. Common Services Centres are internet enabled centres operated by local entrepreneur, called Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) and provide eServices to rural citizens. Over 350 digital services are being offered by these CSCs. The number of functional CSCs (Urban & Rural) across the Country is 3.64 Lakh, out of which 2.62 Lakh CSCs are functional at Gram Panchayat level. With respect to State of West Bengal, as on 30th September, 2019, the number of functional CSCs (Urban & Rural) across the state is 18,053 CSCs, of which 14,123 CSCs are functional at Gram Panchayat level.
• Digital Village: MeitY has also initiated the “Digital Village Pilot Project” in October, 2018. 700 Gram Panchayats(GPs)/ villages with atleast one Gram Panchayat/village per District per State/UT are being covered across the country. The digital services being offered are Digital Health Services (Tele-Health & Tele-Veterinary consultation), Education Service (NIELIT courses on BCC/CCC, Tally), Financial Inclusion Awareness Programme, Skill Development, Solar panel powered street lights including Government to Citizens Services (G2C), Business to Citizen (B2C) Services. The project is covering atleast one Gram Panchayat/Village from 23 district of the West Bengal for implementation under Digital Village Pilot Project.
• 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). So far, 3,80,988 Kms optical fiber has been laid connecting 1,40,668 Gram Panchayats. 1,28,376 Gram Panchayats are ready for service. In the State of West Bengal, 2220 Gram Panchayats are ready for service.
• e-District Mission Mode Project (MMP): e-District project has been implemented at district and sub-district levels of all States/UTs, benefitting all citizens by delivering various high volume e-Services such as Certificates (Birth, Caste, Death, Income and Local Resident), Pension (Old Age, Disability and Widow), Electoral, Consumer Court, Revenue Court, Land Record and services of various departments such as Commercial Tax, Agriculture, Labour, Employment Training & Skill Development etc. e-District services have been launched in 721 districts across all States/ UTs. In the state of West Bengal, 116 e-District services have been launched.
(f): A large number of initiatives have been undertaken by Government for pervasion of digital technology application across the country. Under Pillar 5: e-Kranti of Digital India programme, a total of 44 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) are being implemented by various Central Ministries/Departments, States, and State Departments. These MMPs are providing services in the areas such as education, healthcare, agriculture, justice, land records, social benefits, local governments, rural development, women & child development, legislature, local language, transport, financial services, Income Tax (IT), Passport, Posts, etc. Some of the key initiatives implemented by various Central Ministries/Departments, States, and State Departments covering above sectors are as follows:
• Government e-Marketplace (GeM): GeM is single window solution for online procurement of common use Goods & Services required by various Government Departments / Organizations / PSUs. GeM aims to enhance transparency, efficiency and speed in public procurement. It also provides the tools for direct purchase, e-bidding and reverse e-auction to facilitate the government users to achieve the best value for the money.
• e-NAM: National Agriculture Market (NAM) is a pan-India electronic trading portal which networks the existing APMC (Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee) mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities. The NAM Portal provides a single window service for all APMC related information and services.
• Soil Health Card - has been developed to establish the national database on Soil Health and provide fertilizer and micro-nutrient suggestions for the soil to farmers.
• MCA21: The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), Government of India, has initiated the MCA21 project, which enables easy and secure access to MCA services in an assisted manner for corporate entities, professionals, and general public.
• Passport Seva Project (PSP): Passport Seva enables simple, efficient and transparent processes for delivery of passport and related services. The Passport Seva Project is transforming passport and related services in India to provide a best-in-class experience to Indian citizens.
• National Voters Service Portal (NVSP): Through NVSP, a user can avail and access various services such as access the electoral list, apply for voter id card, apply online for corrections in voter’s card, view details of Polling booth, Assembly Constituency and Parliamentary constituency, and get the contact details of Booth Level officer, Electoral Registration Officer, among other services.
• E-WayBill - provides a self-service platform to consignors, consignees and transporters to generate e-Way Bill for movement of goods from one place to another.
• E-Visa- is a fully online system to facilitate foreigners to get Indian Visa (e-VISA) without approaching the Mission and Service provider i.e. with an ultimate objective to extend Contactless , Faceless and Cashless service.
• e-Procurement: The Central Public Procurement Portal of Government of India facilitates all the Central Government Organizations to publish their Tender Enquiries, Corrigendum and Award of Contract details.
• e-Transport (Vahan and Sarathi): Online vehicle registration and driving license. There is also a mobile App i.e. mParivahan providing details of Registration Certificates, Driving Licenses etc. and other vehicle related information.
• e-Prison: This application suite will provide the vital information about the inmates, lodged in the prisons, in real time environment to the prison officials and other entities, involved in Criminal Justice System.
• Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS): AEPS is a bank led model which allows online interoperable financial inclusion transaction at PoS (MicroATM) through the Business correspondent of any bank using the Aadhaar authentication.
• BHIM: Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) is an app that makes payment transactions simple, easy and quick using Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
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