Narendra Modi Launches 'Digital India Week' to Empower Citizens via IT

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday launched the "Digital India Week" as part of the larger initiative to empower the people and extend services better with the use of information technology and its tools.

The Prime Minister also unveiled a logo for Digital India, an umbrella programme that seeks to transform India into a digitally-empowered, knowledge economy with a host of initiatives for a synchronised and coordinated engagement of the government and its agencies.

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For this scheme, the Prime Minister has already been named chairman of a high-powered monitoring committee and all existing and ongoing e-governance initiatives will be revamped to align them with the larger principles of "Digital India", according to an official statement.

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The larger goal of Digital India includes broadband connectivity in all panchayats, Wi-Fi in all the schools and universities and public Wi-Fi hotspots in all important cities by 2019. It will be deployed in delivering services in areas like health, education, agriculture and banking.

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The vision is centred on three key areas: digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen; governance and service on demand, and digital empowerment of citizens.

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The following are the projects and products that have been launched, or are ready for deployment, as part of the initiative:

• 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.
• Digitise India Platform for large-scale digitization of records in the country to facilitate efficient delivery of services to the citizens.
• Bharat Net Programme 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 ecosystem 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.

Written with inputs from IANS