5. Overview of Digital India : Citizen Services
With (1) National Information Infrastructure (NII) in place, (2) Citizens enabled with Digital Infrastructure as an utility to every citizen, and (3) Aadhaar as national resident authentication tool implemented, both government and citizens are ready for on boarding to Digital India Platform. It is time for government to launch citizen services on Digital India platform. The second vision area of Digital India stipulates to “Deliver governance and services on-demand”. The government has rolled out the following services so far and list is expected to grow as the time passes
- e-Kranti: service is one of the most crucial initiative of Digital India, involving provision of services like e-health care, technology for justice , E-education and more. E-healthcare would cover online medical consultation, online medical records, online medicine supply, pan-India exchange of patient information. Medical records of each patient, including multimedia data like CT scans, X-rays, and MRIs are stored and access from single point of access. Technology for justice plans to integrate the justice system using IT by providing online portals for registering FIRs, upload evidences and eventually reduce the number of pending cases the Indian judiciary system faces by providing an efficient and hassle free litigation process.
- e-Education aims at developing Massive Open Online(MOOC) that can leveraged for education and provide citizens access to huge amounts of knowledge along with a forum for students and teachers to debate, discuss and form meaningful conversations
- e-Governance aims at making the best use of growing technology to provide services like banking , civil services, postal services and more to every citizen of the country. Irrespective of their location. It is not economically feasible to open physical branches of banks and full government services in India, since it is such a widespread nation with distributed population in villages and cities. Hence to provide equal services to all the citizens of the country, e-governance has been envisioned and planned to be implemented and is one of the nine pillars of the Digital India (second vision area also). Using pervasive nature of digital Technology (IT) as platform government intends to reach every far corner of the nation and provide services like voter cards, Aadhaar card, integration of services, registration of companies
- Information for all: The objective of this initiative is over come challenge of making information available to all stake holders across the nation. It also aims to make document imperishable, pervasive and immune to theft and loss.
- SBM Mobile APP: It is an instrument for clean India
- National scholarship portal: Allows student to apply for (1) fresh scholarship and (2) renew existing ones. It is a one-stop solution for students across the nation.
- Digilocker : It is the first step to a paper-less India. It is Government of India’s cloud-based platform for storage, sharing and verification of documents and certificates. Each resident is given a Digilocker account. Citizen need not worry about storing their personal documents. Resident can upload documents, store and share with
- E-sign: This is a provision for signing documents online and exchange them. Its advantages include (1) saves cost, paper and time, (2) tamper- proof digital signature, (3) signature is legally recognized and (4) privacy is maintained.