Many of Digital India initiatives have now reached a stage where awareness on the part of potential users and their active participation is necessary for digital technology to be successful. Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad stating that today said that the Prime Minister would launch the Digital India Week on 1st of July with a view to empower the people of the country through the Digital India Program. He said this program has been designed to be a game changer. The Government of India has been under taking a series ofinitiatives for developing various applications and portals that would go a long way in making the lives of the citizens better. The Digital India Week to be launched by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on 1stJuly, 2015 aims at encouraging people’s involvement and creating awareness among them.

Digital India has been envisioned as an ambitious umbrella program to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. It comprises of various initiatives under the single program each targeted to prepare India for becoming a knowledge economy and for bringing good governance to citizens through synchronized and co-ordinated engagement of the entire Government. 

This program has been envisaged and coordinated by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) in collaboration with various Central Ministries/Departments and State Governments. The Prime Minister as the Chairman of Monitoring Committee on Digital India, activities under the Digital India initiative is being carefully monitored. All the existing and ongoing e-Governance initiatives have been revamped to align them with the principles of Digital India.

The vision of Digital India program also aims at inclusive growth in areas of electronic services, products, manufacturing and job opportunities etc. The vision of Digital India is centred on three key areas -

(i) Digital Infrastructure as a Utility to Every Citizen

(ii) Governance & Services on Demand and

(iii) Digital Empowerment of Citizens

With the above vision, the Digital India program aims to provide Broadband Highways,Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity, Public Internet Access Program, E-Governance: Reforming Government through Technology, eKranti - Electronic Delivery of Services,Information for All, Electronics Manufacturing: Target Net Zero Imports, IT for Jobs and Early Harvest Programs.

Several projects/products have already launched or ready to be launched as indicated below:

• Digital Locker System aims to minimize the usage of physical documents and enable sharing of e-documents across agencies. The sharing of the e-documents will be done through registered repositories thereby ensuring the authenticity of the documents online.

• MyGov.in has been implemented as a platform for citizen engagement in governance, through a “Discuss”, “Do” and “Disseminate” approach. The mobile App for MyGov would bring these features to users on a mobile phone.

• Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) Mobile app would be used by people and Government organisations for achieving the goals of Swachh Bharat Mission.

• eSign framework would allow citizens to digitally sign a document online using Aadhaar authentication.

• The Online Registration System (ORS) under the eHospital application has been introduced. This application provides important services such as online registration, payment of fees and appointment, online diagnostic reports, enquiring availability of blood online etc.

• National Scholarships Portal is a one stop solution for end to end scholarship process right from submission of student application, verification, sanction and disbursal to end beneficiary for all the scholarships provided by the Government of India.

• DeitY has undertaken an initiative namely Digitize India Platform (DIP) for large scale digitization of records in the country that would facilitate efficient delivery of services to the citizens.

• The Government of India has undertaken an initiative namely Bharat Net, a high speed digital highway to connect all 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats of country. This would be the world’s largest rural broadband connectivity project using optical fiber.

• BSNL has introduced Next Generation Network (NGN), to replace 30 year old exchanges, which is an IP based technology to manage all types of services like voice, data, multimedia/ video and other types of packet switched communication services.

• BSNL has undertaken large scale deployment of Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the country. The user can latch on the BSNL Wi-Fi network through their mobile devices.

• To deliver citizen services electronically and improve the way citizens and authorities transact with each other, it is imperative to have ubiquitous connectivity. The government also realises this need as reflected by including ‘broadband highways’ as one of the pillars of Digital India. While connectivity is one criterion, enabling and providing technologies to facilitate delivery of services to citizens forms the other.

Policy initiatives have also been undertaken by DeitY in the e- Governance domain like e-Kranti Framework, Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India, Framework for Adoption of Open Source Software in e-Governance Systems, Policy on Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for Government of India, E-mail Policy of Government of India, Policy on Use of IT Resources of Government of India, Policy on Collaborative Application Development by Opening the Source Code of Government Applications, Application Development & Re-Engineering Guidelines for Cloud Ready Applications

• BPO Policy has been approved to create BPO centres in different North Eastern states and also in smaller / mofussil towns of other states.

• Electronics Development Fund (EDF) Policy aims to promote Innovation, R&D, Product Development and to create a resource pool of IP within the countryto create a self-sustaining eco-system of Venture Funds.

• National Center for Flexible Electronics (NCFlexE) is an initiative of Government of India to promote research and innovation in the emerging area of Flexible Electronics.

• Center of Excellence on Internet on Things (IoT) is a joint initiative of Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), ERNET and NASSCOM.

• Major industry leaders are likely to make announcements involving billions of dollars of investments in Electronics Manufacturing and Digital India. These investments will also result in employment to several lakhs of people.

Following leaders are likely to participate in the Digital India Week launch function:

1. Shri Cyrus P Mistry, Chairman, Tata Sons Limited.

2. Shri Mukesh D. Ambani, Chairman & MD, Reliance Industries Ltd.

3. Shri Sunil Mittal, Chairman and Group CEO, Bharti Enterprises

4. Shri Kumaramangalam Birla, Chairman, Aditya Birla Group

5. Shri Anil Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Group

6. Shri Anil Agarwal, Chairman, Sterlite Technologies Limited.

7. Shri Ping Cheng, CEO, Delta Electronics, Inc.

8. Shri Azim Premji, Chairman, Wipro Limited.

9. Shri Hari Om Rai, Chairman & MD, LAVA International Ltd.

10. Shri Peter Gutsmeidl, CEO, Airbus Group.

11. Shri Pawan Munjal, Hero Group of Companies.

12. Shri Mikio Katayama, Vice Chairman, Nidec Corporation

The estimated impact of Digital India by 2019 would be cross cutting, ranging from broadband connectivity in all Panchayats, Wi-fi in schools and universities and Public Wi-Fihotspots. The program will generate huge number of IT, Telecom and Electronics jobs, both directly and indirectly. Success of this program will make India Digitally empowered and the leader in usage of IT in delivery of services related to various domains such as health, education, agriculture, banking, etc.