WE NEED FOOD. We need power. We
need water. But as the year 2014 has been declared by the government as the
year for “DIGITAL INDIA,” we demand an uninterrupted supply of broadband as
well. The mayor of San Francisco once said Wi-Fi was a fundamental human right.
I’m going along those lines—not quite, but close.
“The citizens of India have mobile phones in their hands, they have
mobile connectivity, but can we walk in the direction of mobile governance? We
have to move in a direction where every poor person is able to operate his bank
account from his mobile, is able to demand various things from the government,
can submit applications, can conduct all his business, while on the move,
through mobile governance and if this has to be done, we have to move towards `digital India` and if we have to move
towards `digital India` then we have a dream” said the Prime Minister in
his hour-long extempore speech addressing the nation from the ramparts of the
Red Fort on the 68th Independence Day.
He
continued “E-governance is easy governance, effective
governance and also economic governance. E-governance paves the way for good
governance. There was a time when we used to say that the railways provided
connectivity to the country. That was it. I say that today it is IT that has
the potential to connect each and every citizen of the country and that is why
we want to realise the mantra of unity with the help of "digital
India"”
Such futuristic vision from Prime
minister of India was unheard and such a detail elaboration of use of Digital
India for E Governance was never expected. He has the farsightedness of
opportunity Digital India brings for youth. We should have understood the IT
inclination of our PM from his election campaigning on social media.
Many of us think that Digital India is present
government’s notion but one of our former IT minister Dayanidhi Maran led the
DoT (Dept of Telecom) and conceived of an ambitious plan to offer free
broadband through BSNL and MTNL at 2 Mbps, it sent newswires across the nation
buzzing. He had announced Broadband
Policy way back in October 2004 with a vision of covering 20 million broadband
subscribers by the end of 2010. Nation-wide Broadband Services was launched by
BSNL & MTNL from January 2005 to cover 200 towns in one year. Youngsters
like me studying in school blessed him and sent him sincere, heartfelt thanks
before going to bed. A fortnight later, though, the minister had to quit. The
best laid plans of mice and men…..
In his speech in Tokyo our PM said and I quote “We used to play with snakes, now we play
with 'mouse'. When we move a mouse, the whole world moves”, the agenda of
Digital India was spread across the globe by him in his international visits
and we understood he meant business, his other plans was also linked to vision
of E Governance, whetehr we speak of Dhan Jan Yojna,
What is Digital India ?
Digital India has three core
components. These include creation of digital infrastructure, delivering
services digitally and digital literacy. It talks about Digital Infrastructure
as a Utility to every Citizen, Governance and Service on Demand and Digital
Empowerment of Citizens.
There are nine defined areas of Digital
India under which all the activities of government are classified.
- Broadband Highway
- Universal Access to Phone
- Public Internet Access Program
- E Governance - Reforming Government through technology
- E Kranti – Electronic Delivery of Services
- Information for all
- Electronic Manufacturing- target NET ZERO Import
- IT for Jobs
- Early Harvest Programe
Government plans to lay down optical fibre for Braodband and build a National
Information Infrastructure. Government aims to adapt IT as its backbone and go
for process reengineering, in which it aims in simplifying forms, online
application and tracking, building online repositories eg School Certificates,
Voter ID Card etc, intergration of
various services with UIDAI, payment gateway, It plans to move to paperless
environment and maintain all database and information in electronic medium. It
is also working to build a public grievance cell.
E Kranti is an important category
in which government has following major services:
·
E education: all schools having broadband
and free wifi, massive online open courses, digital literacy program.
·
E Healthcare: Online medical consultation,
online medical record, online medicine supply, pan India patient information
exchange.
·
Technology for Planning: use of technology in planning,
use of geographic information system.
·
Technology for Farmers: Real time price information,
online ordering of inputs, online subsidy, relief cash transfer.
·
Technology for service: Mobile emergency service.
·
Technology for Financial
Inclusion: mobile
banking, jan dhan yojna.
·
Technology for Justice: e court, e police, e jail, e
prosecution.
·
Technology for security: National Cyber Security coordination
centre.
It is working on information for
all by online hosting of information and documents. Government plans to engage
with public on Social Media and web based platform to inform citizens. It would
use online messaging on special occasions.
Shortcoming
The initiative is commendable and deserves full support of all
stakeholders. However, the initiative also lacks many crucial components such
as :
·
IT literacy
·
lack of legal framework,
·
absence of privacy
and data protection laws,
·
civil liberties abuse possibilities,
·
lack of parliamentary oversight for e-surveillance
in India,
·
lack of intelligence related reforms in India,
·
insecure Indian cyberspace, etc.
These issues have to be managed first before introducing Digital India
initiative in India. Digital India project is worth exploring and
implementation despite its shortcomings that can be rectified before its
implementation
What has
government done till now:
National
Portal of India
The Portal http://india.gov.in has been developed as a Mission Mode Project (MMP) under the National E Governance Plan (NEGP) of the Government. The objective behind the Portal is to provide a single window access to the information and services being provided by the Indian Government for citizens and other stakeholders. An attempt has been made through this Portal to provide comprehensive, accurate, reliable and one stop source of information about India and its various facets. The current Portal is a metadata driven site that links to the other Indian Government Portals/websites for most updated information.
The portal provides information about government
of India having all the links for different website of the government. It is a
single platform whereby you may know about various acts and regulations to
recent e books issued by various ministries. The portal allows applying and
tracking online services ranging from passport, railway tickets, to obtain
information. Although all the links have not started working, as its still in
development mode. It also list out the initiative taken by state government as
well as central government in E Governance.
Public
Grievance Redress Mechanism
The Government of India Portal http://pgportal.gov.in is
aimed at providing the citizens with a platform for redress of their
grievances. If you have any grievance against any Government organization in
the country, you have to lodge your grievance on this website which will go to
the Ministry/Department/State Government concerned for immediate redress.
.bmp)
The Government has started a
website http://attendance.gov.in whereby
any one can track attendance of all the government employees anytime anywhere.
It has asked all the government offices to register online and the biometric is
linked with the website. We can understand the average in time and out time of
each organisation along with average hours of working of the organisation. This
is not dream but true use of technology.
Other Important Links
Name
|
Link
|
Invest
India
|
|
My
Government
|
|
National
Health Portal
|
|
Pradhan
Mantri Jan - Dhan Yojna
|
|
Jeevan
Pramaan Scheme
|
|
Farmers
Portal
|
|
Dept of
Financial Service
|
|
Ministry
of Finance
|
|
Dept of
Electronic and Information Technology
|
|
E
Governance Standards
|
|
Mobile
Governance
|
|
GOI web
directory
|
