IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

The government will appoint nodal officers at key ministries to ensure smooth implementation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious over Rs 1 lakh crore 'Digital India' programme.

The new posts of 'Chief Information Officers' (CIO) would be created in at least 10 key ministries to supervise the implementation.

India has 100 crore mobile phone subscribers, indeed a significant achievement considering we had less than 10 crore subscribers in 2005. Such hyper growth was possible thanks to the competitive mobile service offered by the telcos and availability of affordable phones. But then, quality of service provided by telcos has been the challenge.

Indian subscribers’ patience was tested during the past 12 months due to the incessant call drop menace. The national movement started by the television news channels, nicely followed-up by the public, ensured that the government started monitoring the call drop issue closely.

The Cabinet on Wednesday approved a blueprint for the Digital India programme, which envisages all government services be delivered electronically by 2018. It also seeks to provide unique identities to all citizens.

The programme aims to “bring public accountability through mandated delivery of government services electronically” and provide a “unique ID and e-Pramaan, based on authentic and standards-based interoperable and integrated government applications and data bases”.

The UK has traditionally viewed Silicon Valley as the trailblazer of technological advancement, but environments producing innovation and success in the IT industry extend well beyond the USA. To drive success, the UK needs to expand its horizons and look to emerging markets, such as India, which has seen its ICT sector grow from being a $5.7bn industry in 2000 to a staggeringly large $100bn industry just 12 years later.

India began its Smart Cities Mission (SCM) in 2015 to improve the infrastructure and bring about a transformation in the country within five years. Since then, cities in India have made remarkable progress while Covid-19 paved the way towards trying and adopting new technology and strategies.

Few cities across India had set up Integrated Command and Control Centers (ICCC) to collect data on food and shelter availability, including location and contact information of food distribution, shelter homes, and kitchens. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which create, analyze, and map data, we were able to keep track of the pattern of movements, identify the Covid-19 pandemic in real-time, assign frontline personnel, and ramp up emergency services. The deployment of GIS in India during the pandemic and the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), also known as Drones have demonstrated the potential of location technology, scalability, speed, and capacity to recognize trends that have been effective in our fight against Covid-19.

1. Smartphones: A great equalizer.

Note how mobile phones transformed India within a decade: from being objects of luxury, they became a basic necessity. Landlines were once scarce, and phone service was unreliable and unaffordable. Now, India has amongst the best and cheapest phone connections in the world and has a billion cellphones.

The Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) has started the process of installing registration number trackers and smart cameras to capture images of vehicles that are found to be flouting .

Commonly referred to as the traffic violation detection system, the trackers and cameras will automatically track and capture the violators‘ motorcycle or car registration number once they zoom past the traffic post. “There are two components of the detection system – one is red light violation detection and another speed violation detection system,” a senior BSCL official explained.

The Government of Maharashtra, in partnership with LegitDoc, a local tech-startup, is carrying out the world’s largest blockchain-powered educational credentialing system by issuing nearly 1 million digital diploma certificates

LegitDoc, a blockchain startup, is helping the Government of Maharashtra implement the world’s largest blockchain-powered educational credentialing system by issuing nearly 1 million tamper-proof diploma certificates.

Half the potential economic value of $1 trillion in 2025 could come from new digital ecosystems in diverse sectors, including financial services, agriculture, healthcare, logistics, jobs and skills market, e-governance and other areas

With a strong foundation of digital infrastructure and expanded digital access through Digital India Programme of the government, India is now poised for the next phase of growth – creation of tremendous economic value and empowerment of citizens as new digital applications permeate sector after sector. India can create up to $1 trillion of economic value from the digital economy in 2025, up from around $200 billion currently.

In the next few years, each man, woman and child will receive an “Aadhaar” (meaning: foundation) 12-digit unique identification number. For the poor in India, this would end a vicious cycle where a person cannot prove who they are, and thus they are denied what they are supposed to receive. Now, using the features of the body, technology can identify someone in a matter of seconds. There will no longer be a need for passports, driver licenses, or other old school paper based identification.

Addressing the final plenary of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference here, he said that the world has witnessed a revolution in the field of information and communication technologies which has impacted it in a variety of ways.

India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, recently launched e-RUPI, an electronic voucher promoting digital payment solutions. According to an official statement, it is a QR code or SMS string-based e-voucher, which is delivered to the mobile of the beneficiaries. The users of this seamless one-time payment mechanism will be able to redeem the voucher without a card, digital payments app, or Internet banking access at the service provider. Any government agency and corporation can generate e-RUPI vouchers via their partner banks.

The e-RUPI initiative will be one of the programmes launched over the next few years to limit touchpoints between the government and the beneficiary and “ensure that the benefits reach its intended beneficiaries in a targeted and leak-proof manner”, according to the statement. The vouchers are person- and purpose-specific, which means that if they are released by the government COVID-19 vaccinations, for instance, then they can be redeemed only for that.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has announced the launch of the NPCI Tokenisation System (NTS) that will support the tokenisation of RuPay cards as an alternative to storing card details with merchants. The NTS aims to enhance the safety of customers and provide a seamless shopping experience. NPCI is an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems owned under the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). RuPay is NPCI’s multinational financial services and payment service system.

Card tokenisation replaces the details of a card, such as its number and CVV, which is used to make a transaction with an encrypted algorithmically generated token. The token is generated either by the card issuer or payments network, a report by the Mint explained. The process is expected to secure the sensitive financial data of customers and curb cyber fraud.

Once this objective is off the ground, the Indian Home Ministry will make it mandatory for visa applicants from the United States and the United Kingdom to provide all 10 fingerprints to build the database, hindustantimes reports.

India's apex electronics and software council has offered its expertise to help Gulf countries and companies to face the growing threat to security over the worldwide web.

"India has faced security threats from a long time and we have developed systems and software to successfully face attacks over the internet whether they are targeted at federal or state institutions or the private sector," DK Sareen Executive Director of India's Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council (ESC), told Emirates 24|7.

“All this has democratised information. And this huge database leads to better planning and better governance,” said Mr Shanker. It helps the national e-governance initiative to reach out to rural areas for better planning and service delivery.

On January 14, the World Bank reported that India had saved around 1 billion USD in a year by using Aadhaar as a digital economic platform.

Here are some points you need to know:

• The World Bank report states that India saved around 1 billion USD by transferring fuel subsidy directly to user's bank account with the help of Aadhaar-based Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT)
• The direct transfer has reduced the loss of money through middlemen and agencies taking a toll on the transfer
• The plan also helped to reduce leakage and improved efficient gains
• The World Bank report also pointed out that the government can save up to 11 billion USD if it expands the DBT to other subsidy facilities
• The report was put forward in the World Bank publication, World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends, which was recently released in Washington DC, USA.

In a bid to provide a massive push to connectivity and ICT adoption, India's government has formally unveiled an ambitious initiative called Digital India. Launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Indian capital of Delhi earlier today, the initiative endeavors to create a digital infrastructure for delivering government services.

"I dream of a digital India, where government services are easily available to citizens, where access to information knows no barriers," said Modi. "I dream of a digital India, where government is open and governance is transparent. I dream of a digital India where the world looks to India for the next big idea."

Shoe seller Raj Kumar sits under a tree in Mumbai’s Pherozshah Mehta Road as example of Digital India’s tagline ‘power to empower’. Deftly scrolling through messages in a Samsung smartphone, he replied to a curious query from Asia Times: “I’m on WhatsApp whenever I have time. My friends and I have groups to share news and free governmental schemes”.

Street vendor Raj Kumar’s life swirls in a technology transformation of a country on a scale never before attempted in history. He belongs to the unique population called ‘Linkster Generation’ — those born after 1995, with mobile phones and Internet already in the world.