Lok Sabha Question No. 4545 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2016-12-14
Subject: Digital India Plan
Ministry: ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Asked by: ANANDRAO  ADSUL, VINAYAK BHAURAO RAUT, SHRIKANT EKNATH SHINDE, GAJENDRA SINGH SHEKHAWAT, SHIVAJI ADHALRAO PATIL

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 4545

TO BE ANSWERED ON: 14.12.2016

## DIGITAL INDIA PLAN

## 4545.     SHRI ANANDRAO ADSUL:  SHRI VINAYAK BHAURAO RAUT: DR. SHRIKANT EKNATH SHINDE: SHRI GAJENDRA SINGH SHEKHAWAT: SHRI ADHALRAO PATIL SHIVAJIRAO:

Will the Minister of Electronics and Information Technology be pleased to state:-

- (a) the details of schemes and projects being implemented under the Digital India initiative and the results achieved in this regard;
- (b) whether  his  Ministry  has  started  work  on  the  next  phase  of  Digital  India  Plan  seeking  more private participation besides expanding into areas lacking digital penetration and speed up digitisation and  network  growth  for  quick  delivery  and  implementation  of  e-governance  services  in  rural  and backward areas;
- (c) if so, the details thereof;
- (d) whether the Government is working on application of Internet on things in agriculture, Swachh Bharat, Clean Ganga, Smart Cities and use of drones in monitoring of projects, land survey agriculture spraying and forest survey; and
- (e) if so, the details thereof and the action taken on each of the initiative?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI P. P. CHAUDHARY)

(a): The Government of India is implementing the 'Digital India' programme with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy. It is an Umbrella Programme that covers multiple Ministries and Departments. Several projects/schemes are being implemented under nine pillars  of  Digital  India  programme,  namely  Broadband  Highways,  Universal  Access  to  Mobile Connectivity,  Public  Internet  Access  Programme,  e-Governance-  Reforming  government  through Technology, e-Kranti- Electronic delivery of services, Information for All, Electronics Manufacturing Target NET ZERO Imports, IT for Jobs and Early Harvest Programme. Some of the schemes/projects implemented by MeitY are as follows:

In order to utilize and harness the benefits of Cloud Computing, Meghraj- GI Cloud project has been implemented.  Under  MeghRaj,  an eGov  AppStore has  been  implemented  as  a  central  application repository to host both cloud and non-cloud enabled applications. A countrywide initiative on mobile governance,  called Mobile  Seva ,  to  provide  government  services  to  the  people  also  through  mobile phones and tablets has been implemented. Under National Centre of Geo-informatics (NCoG) project, Geographic Information System (GIS) platform for sharing, collaboration, location based analytics and decision support system for Departments has been developed and  8 applications across various domains are operational.

Under  Digital  India  programme,  good  results  have  been  recorded  in  Electronic  and  Information Technology  sector.  The  digital  footprint  has  gone  up  through  Aadhaar  seeding  and  Direct  Benefit Transfer (DBT). Aadhaar enrolment has increased to 108 crores in November 2016 as against 73 crores in  December  2014.  The  Government  is  keenly  pursuing JAM (Jandhan  -  Aadhaar  -  Mobile) for financial  inclusion.  The  e-Governance  service  transactions  have  increased  to  more  than  64  crore  per month in 2016 as against 29.4 crores per month in 2014. The citizen participation has increased multiple times  through  citizen  engagement  programs  such  as MyGov .  The  governments  services  are  being delivered  at  the  doorstep  of  citizens  through  2.53  lakh Digital  Seva  Kendras  (Common  Services Centres - CSC) while increasing transparency, efficiency and reliability.

To facilitate, on line procurement of Goods & Services required by various Government Departments / Organizations  /  PSUs, Government  e-Marketplace  (GeM) has  been  developed.  GeM  will  enhance transparency, efficiency and speed in public procurement. UMANG (Unified Mobile App for new age Governance) is  an  initiative  to  build  a  common,  unified  platform  and  mobile  app  to  facilitate  single point  of  access  for  government  services  through  mobile.  Through  the  application,  citizens  can  access high impact pan India e-Gov services from the central Government, State Governments, local bodies and their  agencies  and,  even  those  from  private  sector. eSign  framework has  been  developed  as  an integrated  service,  which  facilitates  issuing  a  Digital  Signature  Certificate  and  performing  signing  of requested document by authenticating the Aadhaar  card holder.

Digital Locker provides an ecosystem with collection of repositories and gateways for issuers to upload the documents in the digital repositories, which eliminates the usage of physical documents and enable sharing of e-documents across agencies. So far, over 40.31 lakh Lockers have been opened. About 52.84 lakh documents have been self-uploaded.

e-Hospital-Online  Registration    Framework  (ORF) is  an  initiative  to  facilitate  the  patients  to  take online  OPD  appointments  with  government  hospitals.  This  framework  also  covers  patient  care, laboratory  services  and  medical  record  management.  So  far,  e-Hospital  is  functional  in  58  Govt. hospitals and more than 41.19 lakh appointments have been taken online.

National Scholarship Portal (NSP) provides a centralized platform for application and disbursement of scholarship to students under any scholarship scheme. Over 1.00 crore applications have been submitted. There  are  23  registered  schemes  from  16  Ministries/  Departments  which  includes  over  16.17  lakh registered institutions/ boards/ universities.

Jeevan  Pramaan is  an  Aadhaar  based  Biometric  Authentication  System  for  Pensioners.  The  system provides authenticity to Digital Life Certificate without the necessity of the pensioner being present in person before his/ her Pension Dispensing Authority (PDA). Since its launch, over 36.78 lakh pensioners have registered on the portal.

Besides above, significant results have been recorded in several projects/schemes being implemented in various domains like health, education, employment, trade, finances, law and order, etc.

(b) and (c): No, Sir. However, the Digital India programme has been envisaged to cover all the projects being implemented presently  and to be implemented in future. In this regard, many projects such as Digital  Locker,  e-Sign,  e-Hospital,  Digitize  India  Platform,  Government    e-Market  Place(GeM),  etc. projects have been implemented and many other projects such as Unified Mobile Application for New Age  Governance  (UMANG),  Rapid  Application  System  (RAS),  National  Centre  of  Geo-Informatics (NCoG),  Digital  Village  etc  are  being  implemented.  For  most  of  the  Digital  India  projects,  further scaling  up  to  cover  more  services,  more  beneficiaries,  better  infrastructure,  more  language,  etc.  have been provisioned under various projects.

(d)  and  (e):  Yes,  Sir.  MeitY  has  supported  a  project  to  set-up  a  Centre  of  Excellence  for  Internet  of Things (IoT) at NASSCOM, Bangalore in Public-private partnership (PPP) mode which was approved in the financial  year 2015-16 with an outlay of ` 2195.22 lakhs with MeitY's contribution of  ` 1077.72 lakhs for duration of 5 years. Major objective of this project is to enable India as Innovation Hub for the emerging technology of IoT and to support Government initiatives on IoT solutions for specific India's needs in areas such as water, energy, agriculture, health, security and privacy of data. As part of this project, physical infrastructure for IoT will be set-up to encourage start-ups.

The  physical  laboratory  infrastructure  is  operational  under  this  project.  The  Centre  of  Excellence  for Internet  of  Things  (IoT)  has  issued  guidelines  for  selection  of  Start-ups  and  5  Start-ups  have  been selected for incubation.

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