23-Dec-2022: Achievements Made under Digital India Programme

Government has launched the Digital India programme with the vision of transforming India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge-based economy, by ensuring digital access, digital inclusion, digital empowerment and bridging the digital divide. The 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. The overall goal is to ensure that digital technologies improve the life of every citizen, expand India’s digital economy, and creating investment and employment opportunities and create digital technological capabilities in India.

Digital India has considerably reduced the distance between Government and citizens. It has also helped in delivery of substantial services directly to the beneficiary in a transparent and corruption free manner. In the process, India has emerged as one of the pre-eminent nations of the world to use technology to transform the lives of its citizens.

Digital India is an umbrella programme that covers multiple projects of various Central Ministries/Departments and States and Union Territories (UTs).

The Government had launched the India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS) and the North East BPO Promotion Scheme (NEBPS) under the Digital India programme, with the aim of creating employment opportunities and dispersal of the Information Technology and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) industry in small cities and towns by incentivising the setting up of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and ITES operations by providing financial support of up to ₹ 1 lakh per seat in the form of viability gap funding towards capital and operational expenditures. Under IBPS and NEBPS, 246 BPO/ITES units have started operations covering 27 States/UTs and are providing direct employment to over 51,584 persons.

The present status of some of the key initiatives undertaken by MeitY under Digital India programme across the country is as follows:

• 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 135.5 crore residents have been enrolled.
• Common Services Centres – CSCs are offering government and business services in digital mode in rural areas through Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs). Over 400 digital services are being offered by these CSCs. So far, 5.21 Lakh CSCs are functional (including urban & rural areas) across the country, out of which, 4.14 Lakh CSCs are functional at Gram Panchayat level. There are 23,035 CSCs are functional in the State of Rajasthan, out of which 18823 CSCs are functional at the Gram Panchayat level.
• DigiLocker: Digital Locker provides an ecosystem with collection of repositories and gateways for issuers to upload the documents in the digital repositories. Digital Locker has more than 13.7 crore users and more than 562 crore documents are made available through DigiLocker from 2,311 issuer organisations.
• Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG) – for providing government services to citizen through mobile. More than 1668 e-Services and over 20,197 bill payment services are made available at UMANG.
• e-Sign: e-Sign service facilitates instant signing of forms/documents online by citizens in a legally acceptable form. The services are being leveraged by various applications using OTP based authentication services of UIDAI. More than 31.08 crore e-Sign issued by all agencies wherein, 7.01 Crore e-Sign issued by CDAC.
• MyGov – It is a citizen engagement platform that is developed to facilitate participatory governance. Presently, over 2.76+ crore users are registered with MyGov, participating in various activities hosted on MyGov platform.
• Meri Pehchaan – National Single Sign-on (NSSO) platform called Meri Pehchaan has been launched in July 2022 to facilitate / provide citizens ease of access to government portals. Total 4419 services of various Ministries/States integrated with NSSO.
• Digital Village: MeitY has also initiated the ’Digital Village Pilot Project” in October, 2018. 700 Gram Panchayats (GPs)/Village with at least one Gram Panchayat/Village per District per State/UT are being covered under the project. The digital services being offered are Digital Health Services, Education Service, Financial Services, Skill Development, Solar panel powered street lights including Government to Citizens Services (G2C), Business to Citizen (B2C) Services.
• National Rollout of eDistrict MMP: e-District is a Mission Mode Project (MMP) that aims at electronic delivery of identified high volume citizen centric services at the district or sub-district level. Presently 4,671 e-services have been launched in 709 districts across India.
• Open Government Data Platform– To facilitate data sharing and promote innovation over non-personal data, Open Government Data platform has been developed. More than 5.93 lakh datasets across 12,940+ catalogues are published. The platform has facilitated 94.8 lakh downloads.
• eHospital/ Online Registration System (ORS): e-Hospital application is the Hospital Management Information System for internal workflows and processes of hospitals. Currently, 753 Hospitals have been on-boarded on e-Hospital and ORS has been adopted by 557 hospitals across the country with over 68 lakh appointments booked from ORS.
• CO-WIN - It is an open platform for management of registration, appointment scheduling & managing vaccination certificates for Covid-19. It has registered 110 crore persons and has facilitated administration of 220 crore doses of vaccinations.
• Jeevan Pramaan: Jeevan Pramaan envisages to digitize the whole process of securing the life certificate for Pensioner. 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 685.42lakh Digital Life certificates have been processed since 2014.
• 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, 659 applications across various domains are operational.
• National Knowledge Network: A high speed data communication network has been established to interconnect Institution of higher learning, and research. So far, 1752 links to Institutions have been commissioned and made operational. 522 NKN links have been connected to NIC district centers across India.
• Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyaan (PMGDISHA): The Government has approved a new scheme titled “Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA)” to usher in digital literacy in rural India by covering 6 Crore rural households (one person per household). It has 6.63 crore registered candidates and out of this, 5.69 crore candidates have been trained and 4.22 crore have been certified.
• Unified Payment Interface (UPI) is the leading digital payment platform. It has onboarded 376 banks and has facilitated 730 crore transactions (by volume) worth Rs 11.9 lakh crore.
• FutureSkills Prime: MeitY in collaboration with NASSCOM has initiated a programme titled FutureSkills PRIME. The programme is aimed at re-skilling/ up-skilling of IT professionals in 10 new/emerging technologies which include Augmented/Virtual Reality, Internet of Things, Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation, Additive Manufacturing/ 3D Printing, Cloud Computing, Social & Mobile, Cyber Security and Blockchain.
• Cyber Security: The Government has taken necessary measures to tackle challenges with regard to data privacy and data security through administering the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 which has necessary provisions for data privacy and data security. India has made it to the top 10 in Global Cyber security Index (GCI) 2020 launched by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on June 29, 2021, moving up 37 places to rank as the tenth best country in the world on key cyber safety parameters.
• Electronics Manufacturing
• Modified Special Incentive Package (M-SIPS): As on date, 315 applications with proposed investment of approximately Rs. 85,632 crore have been approved.
• Electronic Manufacturing Clusters (EMC): Under EMC scheme, 19 Greenfield EMCs and3 Common Facility Centres (CFCs) measuring an area of 3,464 acres with project cost of Rs. 3,732 crore including Government Grant-in-aid of Rs. 1,529 crore have been approved in 15 states across the country. Based on closure of receipt of applications under EMC scheme, MeitY notified Modified Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC 2.0) Scheme on 1st April, 2020 for further strengthening the infrastructure base for electronics industry in the country and deepening the electronics value chain.

3-Aug-2022: E-governance

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India launched 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. In summary, our mission is to ensure that the digital technologies improve the life of every citizen; expand India’s digital economy, create investment & employment opportunities and global digital technological capabilities in the country.

Digital India has dramatically reduced distance between Government and citizens significantly. Further, Digital India has also helped in delivery of substantial services directly to the beneficiary in a transparent and corruption free manner. India has become one of the pre-eminent nations of the world to use technology to transform the lives of citizens. Digital India is an umbrella programme that covers multiple projects of various Central Ministries/Departments and States/UTs. Some of the major initiatives related to public service delivery are as follows:

• Common Services Centres – CSCs are offering government and business services in digital mode in rural areas through Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs). Over 400 digital services are being offered by these CSCs. So far, 5.31 Lakh CSCs are functional (including urban & rural areas) across the country, out of which, 4.20 Lakh CSCs are functional at Gram Panchayat level.
• Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG) – for providing government services to citizen through mobile. More than 1,570 government services and over 22,000 bill payment services are made available at UMANG.
• 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 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. Presently 4,671 e-services have been launched in 709 districts across India.
• DigiLocker: It is facilitating paperless availability of public documents. Digital Locker has more than 11.7 crore users and more than 532 crore documents are made available through DigiLocker from 2,167 issuer organisations.
• Unified Payment Interface (UPI) is the leading digital payment platform. It is integrated with 330 banks and facilitated over 586 crore monthly transactions worth over Rs 10 lakh crore has been facilitated for the month of June, 2022.
• CO-WIN - It is an open platform for management of registration, appointment scheduling & managing vaccination certificates for Covid-19. More than 203 crore vaccination doses and 110 crore registrations have been facilitated by co-win.
• MyGov – It is a citizen engagement platform that is developed to facilitate participatory governance. More than 2.48 crore users are actively using MyGov.
• Meri Pehchaan – National Single Sign-on platform called Meri Pehchaan has been launched in July 2022 to facilitate / provide citizens ease of access to government portals.
• MyScheme – This platform has been launched in July 2022 to facilitate citizens to avail eligibility-based services.
• Direct Benefit Transfers – 315 Schemes across 53 Ministries are offering Aadhaar enabled direct benefit transfer to citizens. So far, Rs 24.3 lakh crore has been disbursed through DBT platform.
• Diksha – Diksha is a national level educational platform that helps students and teachers to participate, contribute and leverage a common platform to achieve learning goals at scale for the country. As on 27th July 2022, 7,633 courses are available and more than 15 crore enrolments have been done.

Some of the major digital initiatives taken by the Government for welfare of farmers are as follows:

• National Agriculture Market (e-NAM): Government of India has launched National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) Scheme with the objective of creating online transparent competitive bidding system to facilitate farmers with remunerative prices for their produce. More than 1.73 crore farmers & 2.26 lakh traders have been registered on e-NAM platform. Also, 1000 mandis of 18 States and 3 UTs have been integrated with e-NAM platform.
• M-KISAN – mKisan Portal (www.mkisan.gov.in) for sending advisories on various crop related matters to the registered farmers through SMSs. In mkisan more than 5.13 crore farmers are registered for receiving crop advisories through SMS. More than 2,462 crore mobile based advisories have been sent to farmers to assist them in their farming activities.
• One Stop Window-Farmers Portal (www.farmer.gov.in) for dissemination of information on various agricultural related matter including, seeds variety, Storage Godown, Pests and plant diseases, Best Agricultural Practices, Watershed, Mandi details etc.
• Soil Health Card – It provides soil related information to facilitate farmers in farming activities. More than 22 crore soil health cards have been printed and dispatched to farmers.
• Mobile based advisory system for agriculture & Horticulture (M4AGRI) – It is mobile based advisory system for agriculture and horticulture. It has been implemented in the North-East States namely Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh.

The Government has taken following steps in direction of data governance for socio-economic development in the country. The brief details are as follows:

• Open Government Data – To facilitate data sharing and promote innovation over non-personal data, Open Government Data platform has been developed. More than 5.65 lakh datasets across 12,800+ catalogues are published. The platform has facilitated 93.5 lakh downloads.
• API Setu – To facilitate data exchange among the system, API Setu has been developed as a platform. The platform has more than 2100 APIs, and 1000+ user organisations.
• MeitY has prepared the draft National Data Governance Framework Policy which aims to realize the full potential of India’s digital government vision, maximize the efficiency of data-led governance & public service delivery and to catalyze data-based research and innovation. Currently the draft policy is under finalization. MeitY released the Draft National Data Governance Framework Policy on 26th May 2022 for public consultation.

The Government has already taken necessary measures to tackle challenges with regard to data privacy and data security through administering the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 which has necessary provisions for data privacy and data security.

30-Nov-2021: Digital India Programme

Under the Digital India Programme, BharatNet project is being implemented in a phased manner to provide last mile broadband connectivity to Gram Panchayats (GPs) in the country through Wi-Fi or any other suitable broadband technology including Fiber to the Home (FTTH). As on 01.11.2021, a total number of 1,66,088Gram Panchayats have been made Service Ready in the country, including 8,386 Gram Panchayats in Chhattisgarh.

All the Gram Panchayats are to be provided broadband connectivity under the BharatNet project. Further, as part of this project, the last mile connectivity is to be provided through Wi-Fi or any other suitable broadband technology in all GPs to access broadband/internet services. The scope of BharatNet has been recently extended upto all inhabited villages beyond Gram Panchayats. The targeted date for completion of the project is August, 2023.

1-Jul-2020: MeitY celebrates 5 years of Digital India

Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister for Electronics & IT, Communications and Law & Justice, has said that the digital journey has focused on empowerment, inclusion and digital transformation and its positive impact is being felt in all aspects of the lives of Indian citizens. While addressing a video conference marking celebration of 5 years journey of India's Digital India Programme here, today, he stated that in the current pandemic scenario, thanks to JAM trinity (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar an Mobile), people are able to work from home, people are able make digital payment, students are able to learn through TV, Mobile and Laptop, patients are able to take tele-consultation, and farmers in remote corner of India is able to get PM-KISAN benefits directly in their bank accounts.

The conference was organised by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to celebrate 5 Years of Digital India progressing towards Digital Bharat - Aatmanirbhar Bharat. This conference was graced by the presence of  MoIT, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology, Shri Sanjay Dhotre, Additional Chief Secretaries of some States, Shri Nandan Nilekani, the IT Secretaries of all States, representatives from Ministries, Industry and the academia. The conference was attended by 1,500 delegates all over the world.

The Digital India journey in the past 5 years has centred around empowerment, inclusion, digital transformation. It has positively impacted all aspects of the lives of Indian citizens identity management through Aadhaar, Direct Benefit Transfer, Common Services Centres, DigiLocker, mobile based UMANG services, participatory governance through MyGov, Jeevan Pramaan, to UPI, Ayushman Bharat, e-Hospital, PM-Kisan, e-NAM, Soil Health Cards, SWAYAM, SWAYAM PRABHA, National Scholarship Portal, e-Pathshala, and so on. A ‘National AI Portal’ and ‘Responsible AI for Youth’ was launched recently to lay the foundation for an AI-powered future. Digital India’s initiatives have also played a pivotal role during the CoVID-19 situation, such as Aarogya Setu, E-Sanjeevani, sensitisation through MyGov and Social media platforms etc.

Pointing  out that the number of e-Services has increased from 2,463 in 2014 to 3,858 till May 2020 and daily average electronic transactions have increased from 66 lakh in 2014 to 16.3 crore in 2020, the Union Minister shared that Aadhaar has been issued to 125.7 crore residents and 4,216 crore authentications have been facilitated. “Direct Benefit Transfer to the tune of Rs 11.1 lakh crore has been disbursed for 426 schemes from 56 Ministries and has led to the saving of Rs 1.7 lakh crore due. Jan Dhan Accounts have reached 38.73 crore beneficiaries, with a total of Rs 1.33 lakh crore in beneficiaries bank accounts. Mobile and internet connections are being used by 117 crore and 68.8 crore users, respectively. DigiLocker, launched on July 1, 2015, has 378 crore issued documents. Unified Mobile App for New-Age Governance (UMANG) has 860+ services operational and more than 3 Crore downloads have taken place, he further added. MyGov has been launched to facilitate participatory governance in the country, with a total of 1.17 Crore registered participants, while facilitating the Mann Ki Baat of the Prime Minister.

Emphasizing the Digital India’s initiatives during the COVID-19 situation, such as Aarogya Setu for its ground-breaking development time of 3 weeks and localisation in 12 Indian languages with 13 crore downloads, with additional 3 crores for Kai OS, he informed that it has helped identify over 350 COVID-19 hotspots. He further said that sensitization through MyGov and Social Media Platforms have played a crucial role in tackling the pandemic through user friendly graphics, video, quotes to citizens through the MyGov website and through all social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Telegram, and YouTube. He also spoke briefly about other initiatives such as E-Sanjeevani, SAMHAR-COVID-19, Ayush Sanjivani Mobile app, and VC and e-Office.

While concluding, he reiterated that Digital India’s achievements can be attributed to the united efforts of Central Government, State Governments, Industries and Academia, all key parts of Team India. Lastly, he stated that India’s talent pool of skilled people, technology prowess and geo-political advantages are poised to make India an inspiring country in the 21st Century for the welfare of Indians and the world.

During the event a panel discussion was held regarding public digital platforms. Shri Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, MeitY spoke about ‘Building Digital Government Platforms for the Digital Economy of the Future’. Shri Nandan Nilekani, Non-Executive Chairman, Infosys, spoke about the relevance and success of public-private partnership models in e-Government Development, where he touched four dimensions-Government as an enabler of technology, as a customer of Technology, as a platform provider and the Government as collaborator to provide solutions. He congratulated Hon’ble Minister on the successful implementation of Digital India in the country. The building of Aatma Nirbhar Digital Systems also deliberated extensively. ‘Aatmanirbhar’ or ‘Self-Reliance’ implies development of in-house capacity and capability to drive economic and social development of the country.

31-Aug-2019:  'Build for Digital India' programme.

Tech giant Google has signed a statement of intent with the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) for rolling out 'Build for Digital India' programme. The programme will offer a platform to engineering students to develop market-ready, technology-based solutions that address key social problems.

As part of the program, engineering students across the country will be invited to present their ideas and solutions in areas like healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities and infrastructure, women safety, smart mobility and transportation, environment, accessibility and disability and digital literacy.

Applicants will take part in online and offline learning opportunities on key technologies such as Machine Learning (ML), Cloud and Android that will be offered through Google's Developer Student Club network and other Google Developer networks.

Google will also offer mentorship sessions in product design, strategy and technology to the most promising products and prototypes.

This initiative will not only motivate the college students across India to innovate but will also produce some good technology solutions for some major social challenges of India.

7-Jan-2018: Government to roll out e-Sansad and e-Vidhan

e-Sansad and e-Vidhan will be rolled out in Parliament and State Legislatures to digitize and make their functioning paperless.

e-Sansad and e-Vidhan are mission mode projects of Government of India under Digital India, to make the functioning of Parliament and State Legislatures paperless. MoPA is the Nodal Ministry for implementation of both the projects. According to the agenda prepared by MoPA for the Conference, these projects would make the functioning of Parliament and State Legislatures participative, responsive, transparent, productive and more accountable to the public and make the entire Legislative process more efficient. Further, this environment friendly initiative is in line with the ‘Go Green’ initiative of the Government.

Some States have made good progress in the field of automation of their Legislatures, yet consumption of huge volume of papers is still going on in these States. In order to address this issue and economize the entire Legislative process, e-Vidhan is proposed to be implemented in all the States/ UTs with Legislatures. For rolling out e-Vidhan in the State legislatures, funding to the maximum extent would be provided by the MoPA. The Delegates of the Whips’ Conference would deliberate on the issue and make suggestions/ recommendations for making the rolling out of e-Vidhan a success.

22-Dec-2022: QR Codes for LPG Cylinders

A pilot study for QR code tagging of cylinders has been undertaken by Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOCL) at Madanpur Khadar Bottling Plant, Delhi. Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO) has accorded approval for a period of 3 months w.e.f. 01.09.2022 for filling of QR coded LPG cylinders at Madanpur Khadar Bottling plant and dispatch to only two distributors of Delhi Market. Subsequently PESO has extended the permission further for 3 more months i.e. till 28.02.2023. This initiative has potential to resolve issues of pilferage, tracking and tracing and better inventory management of gas cylinders. IOCL has sent total 23,827 such QR tagged 14.2 Kg LPG cylinders to these distributors till 27.11.2022.

Public Sector Oil Marketing Companies(OMCs) have taken several steps to prevent pilferage/supply of underweight cylinders to LPG consumers, which inter-alia include, random weight checking of filled cylinders at bottling plant, sealing of cylinders with Tamper Evident Seal, Statistical Quality Control on 10 % cylinders received from bottling plant, pre-delivery checks of cylinders, carrying portable weighing scales by delivery persons, random checks by OMC officials at go-down/delivery points/en-route, organizing public awareness campaigns etc.