IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani today launched the KV Shaala Darpan programme of Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan here, saying that the programme would script “a new definition of e-governance, good governance, and digital India”.

Elaborating, the Minister said, “The programme would be a step forward in the direction of fulfilling the vision of digital India of our PM Modi.” The project will link all 1,100 Kendriya Vidyalayas.

According to a report of the study published online this month (2 August) in Scientometrics, about 88 per cent of ICT publications in South Asia originate in India.

Despite the digital India dream of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the huge amount of funds sanctioned by the Central Government for e-governance, none of the official websites of the State Government's Departments have been found properly updated till date.

Taking stock of the situation, the Chief Secretary's office has directed all the Departments concerned to do the needful.

The Government of India (GOI) has adopted a comprehensive and supportive open source policy. It builds on their earlier efforts to adopt open standards for procurement.

As we've seen in other regions, the adoption of such policies often brings out concerns from some quarters who want to spread 'fear and doubt' about the policy. So, what are the facts about the policy, and how does it fit into India's broader economic development strategy?

The number of mobile phones added in India over the last 2.5 years equals the population of Italy or France, according to Minister of Electronics & Information Technology and Law & Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad.

He said that 72 mobile manufacturing factories were added during the last two years in India.

Addressing the industry at the ASSOCHAM Focus conference in New Delhi, Planning Commission member secretary Raajeva Ratna Shah disclosed the 11th five year plan for 2008-2012. The plan is in keeping with digital content production and distribution in India.

The Government launched the provision for online visas on November 27. And within a month, 22000 online visas have been issued by the Government, which is almost equal to the number of visas on arrival (VoAs) issued in the last 11 months.

The Defence Minister of India Manohar Parrikar inaugurated the Central Data Centre, Army Cloud and Digi-Locker for the Indian Army on November 9, 2015. The Indian Army has launched such initiatives as part of the Digital Army programme. The new digital services can be of great use for faster documentation, information and speedy delivery of services. /p>

The facility under the Army Cloud includes a Central Data Centre, a Near Line Data Centre, both in Delhi and a Disaster Recovery site for replication of its critical data along with virtualised servers and storage in an environmentally controlled complex. This is similar to the Meghraj; the Cloud of National Informatics Centre (NIC) and will provide all Information Technology Infrastructure including servers for computing, storage, network and network security equipment centrally, for automation of Indian Army. The latest technologies in the field have been incorporated in the implementation of the first ever Software Defined Data Centre, wherein all the resources could be provisioned to different applications on the Cloud. It has already started providing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to the pan Army users as the first Cloud service and will soon provide Software as a Service (SaaS).

Currently, India has roughly 700 million internet users across the country. However, despite the huge number, digital adaptation by small businesses is very less. While the big businesses are entirely dependent upon accounting software, those in the MSME sector still do their accounting on paper.

Most MSMEs are still unstructured and hire accountants for their daily entries. To be more organized, small businesses need to adopt modern and faster techniques of accounting. To this end, many mobile apps have been designed to make it easier for MSMEs to go digital in their bookkeeping. Digital accounting methods have numerous benefits such as:

5G Catalyst Technologies, also known as “5GCT”, is an Urban Data Platform that aggregates, visualizes and analyzes city ecosystem data to create channels to drive impact- all in one single platform. 5GCT has helped make cities “smart” through working with city and municipality leaders to make sense of the existing city data to improve the lives of its citizens.

Featured at the World Economic Forum 2022 in Davos, Switzerland, 5GCT became globally renowned as the first Thai startup selected as Global Excellence Leader in the United Nations’ SDG #11, Sustainable Cities and Communities, at the 25+ 5 SDG Cities by UNGSII (in cooperation with UN Habitat, UNSDSN, UNICEF, UN Academic Impact, and WHO).

Visa has collaborated on this project with five Indian banks: SBI, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Indian Overseas Bank and Axis Bank, the Hindustanitimes reports.

This system works by issuing those with Aadhaar numbers a new Visa Instant Account and a pre-paid card, immediately. Prior to this, Visa’s tough proof-of-identification registration policies have automatically excluded many people India, but by using widely-issued Aadhaar numbers as valid identification, the spread is much greater.

Bangladesh is looking towards India's flagship schemes of national population registration (NPR) and Aadhaar card.

Wary of increasing threats to its internal security and to implement targeted subsidy schemes for the benefit of its poverty ridden population, Bangladesh is looking towards India's flagship schemes of national population registration (NPR) and Aadhaar card.

Reported in the Deccan Herald, this registration system is a Karnataka Ayurveda and Unani Practitioners (KAUP) Board objective.

“This initiative should be extended to other forms of medicine also, which will keep the quacks at bay,” Shettar said.

Without the biometric system, many visitors use fake addresses and names to exceed the prison’s weekly visitation allowance of one visit per week.

Authorities hope that the new biometric system will help reduce the volume of contraband items being transferred to the prison, which are believed to be largely facilitated by unidentified visitors.

As India continues to urbanize further, having an understanding of blockchain as a tool of digital governance can make it easier for city living for tens of millions of citizens, making it simpler & responsive.

India is undergoing a rapid evolution in how its cities operate and grow. With increased urbanization, the country has an urgent need for smarter and more efficient cities. The government of India has been working on its Smart Cities Mission to improve infrastructure, public services, and governance in general with the help of digital technology. A new technology such as blockchain has the potential to transform urban governance.

The app has been launched under the e-governance initiative.

Now people will be able to fetch detailed information about the country’s special economic zones with the help of the “SEZ India” app that has been launched by the Commerce Ministry.

On his recent visit to the Silicon Valley, Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and emphasised among other things that his government is now moving away from being in the business of business and instead calling upon private organisations to tap into the immense possibilities offered by the Indian market.

Modi added the government plans to be a facilitator, working towards creating an enabling business environment and removing bottlenecks that have historically throttled their entry into India. He presented the idea of a “Digital India” to the IT industry leaders in the United States and asked them to invest in this initiative.

Focus on 3 key areas: The focus of the Digital India programme is to enable digital infrastructure for every citizen with high speed internet in all Gram Panchayats, sharable privates spaces in a public cloud, digital identity for citizens etc., bring governance and services on demand with single window access to all government departments, real time online availability of government services, making transaction above a threshold cashless etc., and digitally empowering citizens with universally accessible digital resources, support for Indic languages, availability of government documents/certificates online, collaborative and participative governance etc.

According to a report in the Deccan Herald, the bogus cards were created by the food and civil supplies department deputy director in collusion with three fair price shop owners as well as the biometric franchisee.