Digital India : Key Features

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the ‘Digital India’ week on Wednesday in the presence of senior ministerial colleagues and top industry honchos, a move that aims to give a ‘digital push’ to governance and jobs. Right from his first day in office, the Prime Minister has always exhibited interest in a digitizing campaign for India, something which he feels would bridge the gap between government initiatives and its beneficiaries. With increasing internet penetration in India, a digital India campaign is the need of the hour.

• Digital locker system to minimize usage of physical documents and enable their e-sharing via registered repositories.
• MyGov.in as an an online platform to engage citizens in governance through a "Discuss, Do and Disseminate" approach.
• Swachh Bharat Mission Mobile app to achieve the goals set by this mission.
• e-Sign framework to allow citizens to digitally sign documents online using Aadhaar.
• e-Hospital system for important healthcare services such as online registration, fee payment, fixing doctors' appointments, online diagnostics and checking blood availability online.
• National Scholarship Portal for beneficiaries from submission of application to verification, sanction and disbursal.
• Digitize India Platform for large-scale digitization of records in the country to facilitate efficient delivery of services to the citizens.
• Bharat Net programe as a high-speed digital highway to connect all 250,000 gram panchayats of country -- the world's largest rural broadband project using optical fibre.
• BSNL's Next Generation Network to replace 30-year old telephone exchanges to manage all types of services like voice, data, multimedia and other types of communication services.
• BSNL's large scale deployment of Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the country.
• "Broadband Highways' as one of the pillars of Digital India to address the connectivity issue while enabling and providing technologies to facilitate delivery of services to citizens.
• Outsourcing Policy to create such centres in different northeastern states and in smaller towns across the country.
• Electronics Development Fund to promote innovation, research and product development to create a resource pool within the country as also a self-sustaining eco-system of venture funds.
• National Centre for Flexible Electronics to promote research and innovation in the emerging area of flexible electronics.
• Centre of Excellence on Internet on Things (IoT) as a joint initiative of the government agencies and private institutions such as Nasscom.

Digital India promises to transform India into a connected knowledge economy offering world-class services at the click of a mouse and will be implemented in a phased manner.The government feels that open access to "broadband highways" across cities, towns and villages would give a fillip to trade across the country. "The other important benefit we see is surge in e-commerce. The intention is to bring down net electronics imports to zero by 2020, from about $100 billion now, a move which will help the country control its current-account deficit. As things stand, net annual electronics imports could rise to $400 billion by 2020, outgrowing oil imports.