Ms. Parul Bansal (Assistant Professor) and Ms. Charu Jain (Assistant Professor) along with 27 students from Department of Electrical and Electronics Engg, Department of Electronics and Communication Engg, Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon visited the Centre for e-Governance, Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) Electronics Niketan, New Delhi on 6th July 2015 with the purpose of understanding the initiatives being taken by the Government of India under the Digital India Week (1st July-7th July 2015).

The session was taken by Mr. Sunil Kumar, Project Manager at CeGov. In his presentation, he talked about the various aspects of the e-Governance such as its definition, evolution, policies and most importantly services. The CeG (Center of e-Governance) is a part of the Awareness and Communication activity under National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). He then briefed the students about vision of NeGP and Mission Mode Project (MMPs). He also introduced to an Open Source Operating System named BOSS (Bharat operating system solution). BOSS is an open source operating system based on Linux kernel developed by C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) available in 22 Indian official languages.

Objectives of the Digital India Week are:

1. Inform, educate and engage with citizens through organization of events at large number of Digital Points of Presence such as CSCs/ Post Offices, Schools, Gram Panchayats, etc.

2. Connect all citizens through Digital Media campaigns and events

3.Inform all about the vision, services and benefits of the Programme

4. Popularise and expand the reach of existing e-services, plan and launch new services

5. Educate citizens on functional digital literacy, cyber security, cyber hygiene, ensure better utilization of Digital infrastructure during the DI Week and beyond

6. Incentivize, motivate and connect citizens with the Digital India Programme.

CSC (common services center) infrastructure, Mobile Service Delivery Gateway, e-Pramaan and National Policy on Information Technology have been set up by the government under the Digital India initiative. Various e-Projects implemented by central Government were showcased like Banking, Central Excise & Customs, Income Tax (IT), Insurance, Passport, Pension, etc. Also various State level e-Projects are Agriculture, Commercial Taxes, e-District, Land Records (NLRMP), Municipalities, e-Panchayats, Road Transport, PDS, Education and Health etc. A number of projects implemented in collaboration of central Government and State Government are CSC, e-Biz, e-Courts, e-Procurement and India Portal etc.

Some of the major initiatives involved in Digital India are:

1. There are Nine pillars of Digital India:

a. Broadband Highways

b. Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity

c. Public Internet Access Programme

d. e-Governance: Reforming Government through Technology

e. e-Kranti - Electronic Delivery of Services

f. Information for All

g. Electronics Manufacturing

h. IT for Jobs

i. Early Harvest Programmes

2. DigiLocker: DigiLocker offers a dedicated personal storage space, linked to each resident’s Aadhaar number. DigiLocker can be used to securely store e-documents as well as store Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) link of e-documents issued by various issuer departments. It will minimize the use of physical documents and will provide authenticity of the e-documents. It will provide secure access to Govt. issued documents. It will also reduce administrative overhead of Govt. departments and agencies and make it easy for the residents to receive services.

3. eSign: The objective of eSign service is to offer on-line service to citizens for instant signing of their documents securely in a legally acceptable form. Two major challenges involved are (a) authentication of the user and (b) Trusted method of signing. Aadhaar based authentication is carried out to address the first challenge and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is used to securely sign the user document and establish the trust.

3. eBasta: It is a framework to make school books accessible in digital form as e-books to be read and used on tablets and laptops. It will provide digital and eBook versions of school books and other study material to school students through-out India.

In the last session, a Quiz related to Digital India was conducted and top three participants were awarded with a souvenir.