A. Kennedy
Asst. Prof. Dept. of Commerce. St. Joseph’s College, Jakhama, Nagaland.
Since independence we hear India is developing country. When are we going to hear India is emerged country? The phase is slowly moving forward to compete with digital world. In order to compete with digital world, we need to transform our country into a digitally empowered knowledge economy. As result of high and forward thinking of our prime minister, a pan India Programme called “Digital India” has been proposed in the Budget 2014.
Background of Digital India Programme: Even though India is known as a powerhouse of software, the availability of electronic government services to citizens is still comparatively low. Digital channels for delivery of sales and service are the new normal. While a billion Indians are still discovering the power of Internet and convenience of Digital Services, there are 200 million Indians for whom Online is THE ONLY way to transact. The National e-Governance Plan approved in 2006 has made a steady progress through Mission Mode Projects and Core ICT Infrastructure, but greater thrust is required to ensure effective progress in electronics manufacturing and e-Governance in the country. The Digital India vision provides the intensified impetus for further momentum and progress for this initiative and this would promote inclusive growth that covers electronic services, products, devices, manufacturing and job opportunities. India in the 21st Century must strive to meet the aspirations of its citizens where government and its services reach the doorsteps of citizens and contribute towards a long-lasting positive impact. The Digital India Programme aims to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy by leveraging IT as a growth engine of new India.
What is Digital India? Digital India is an initiative by the Government of India to ensure that Government services are made available to citizens electronically by improving online infrastructure and by increasing Internet connectivity. It was launched on 1 July 2015 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The initiative includes plans to connect rural areas with high-speed internet networks.
Digital India Programme Includes various schemes worth over Rs 1 lakh crore like Digital Locker, e-eduction, e-health, e-sign and national scholarship portal. The programme includes projects that aim to ensure that government services are available to citizens electronically and people get benefit of the latest information and communication technology. The Ministry of Communications and IT is the nodal agency to implement the programme.
Three Visions and Nine Pillars: There are 3 vision areas and 9 pillars that provide foundation for Digital India. There are solutions that support these pillars and are enabled by technology that is viable and feasible.
The three visions are
• Digital infrastructure as a Utility to Every Citizen
• Governance and Services on Demand
• Digital Empowerment of Citizens (Digital literacy)
Digital Infrastructure as a Utility to Every Citizen: The government is planning to provide high-speed internet connectivity to 250,000 Gram Panchayats, which will be a core utility for digital inclusion. The citizens will be provided with a digital identity which will be unique, lifelong, online, and valid. There will be easy access to Common Service Centers and a shareable private space for every citizen on a public cloud.
Governance and Services on Demand: Under this vision, all the government departments will be seamlessly integrated with high-speed optical fiber, which will improve inter operability of these organizations and will result in real-time service delivery from online or mobile platform. Apart from this, the government is planning to make all citizen entitlements portable through cloud for easy and country-wide access and to digitally transform the services for improving ease of doing business in India. The government also plans to use the power of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for decision support systems & development.
Digital Empowerment of Citizens: This vision is to empower citizens through digital literacy and universal access to digital resources. e.g. all documents/certificates to be available on cloud and in Indian languages. Government also wants to provide collaborative digital platforms for participatory governance. e.g. My Gov website for crowd sourcing ideas.
Nine Pillars are (Which is called Primary objectives of Digital India Programme) i) Broadband Highways ii) Universal Access to mobile phones iii) Public's 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 ix) Early Harvest Programmes.
Cyber Security in Digital India: Government of India started the Digital India initiative to transform citizens’ life through digital medium - to establish robust platform of modern technologies to connect citizens to achieve necessary services at common service centers like training, capacity building, registration, grievance redressed, technical support, enrollment in government schemes. This is the new era in which the Government is looking forward for every citizen to have access to Internet and ensure good governance via e-Governance by implementing the ‘Digital India’ initiative.
With such ambitious initiatives and growing security concerns, security has become one of the most important focus areas which need to be looked from the perspective of protecting citizen information, government agency details and critical infrastructure. There have been several incidences of cybercrime on corporate and individual level in the past few years. Putting the data of 1.2 billion people on the cloud could be risky and could threaten the security of individuals and the nation. In digital age, we need to ensure that ecosystem is secured from various cyber threats and espionage as they are growing at an exceptional rate. With threat landscape fierce as never before, robust framework needs to be established for cyber security and this also motivates the need to understand the root cause, and implement a proactive approach in order to avoid any high impact to the government or organization’s vision and business.
Thus, Digital India aims at making technology central to enable change. By creating this kind of economy, cyber security will be one of the key concerns of the initiative since the impact of losing the data gets higher when moving towards a digitized economy. Cyber-attacks at this level would not only affect the public safety of citizens, but also the commercial integrity of organizations and ultimately, global existence and competitiveness of India. Hence, the Digital India project demands very strong network security at all levels of operation.
Conclusion: India would become a very powerful digitally connected world. This would lead to a good architecture for electronic delivery of service. The Digital India project provides a huge opportunity to use the latest technology to redefine the paradigms of service delivery. A digitally connected India can help in improving social and economic condition of people living in rural areas through development of non-agricultural economic activities apart from providing access to education, health and financial services. However, it is important to note that ICT alone cannot directly lead to overall development of the nation. The overall growth and development can be realized through supporting and enhancing elements such as literacy, basic infrastructure, overall business environment, regulatory environment, etc. Further, Security should be the most important area at all level of operation for the digitally empowered knowledge economy of the country.
