Lok Sabha Question No. 2933 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2022-08-03
Subject: e-Governance
Ministry: ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Asked by: Parvesh Sahib Singh

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

## LOK SABHA

## UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 2933

TO BE ANSWERED ON: 03.08.2022

## E-GOVERNANCE

## 2933.   SHRI PARVESH SAHIB SINGH VERMA:

Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state: -

- (a) whether the Government is taking any steps with regard to e-governance in the country and if so, the details  of  steps  taken  to  boost  e-governance  in  public  service  delivery  in  the  country  during  the  recent years;
- (b) the steps taken by the Government for e-technology in aid of farmers and agriculture during the recent years;
- (c) whether  the  Government  is  taking  any  steps  in  direction  of  data  governance  for  socio-economic development in the country and if so, the details thereof; and
- (d) the steps taken by the Government with regard to data privacy and data security in India?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI RAJEEV CHANDRASEKHAR)

(a):  The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India launched the 'Digital  India'  programme  with  the  vision  to  transform  India  into  a  digitally  empowered  society  and knowledge-based economy by ensuring digital access, digital inclusion, digital empowerment and bridging the digital divide. In summary, our mission is to ensure that the digital technologies improve the life of every citizen; expand India's digital economy, create investment & employment opportunities and global digital technological capabilities in the country.

Digital  India  has  dramatically  reduced  distance  between  Government  and  citizens  significantly.  Further, Digital India has also helped in delivery of substantial services directly to the beneficiary in a transparent and  corruption  free  manner.  India  has  become  one  of  the  pre-eminent  nations  of  the  world  to  use technology to transform the lives of citizens. Digital India is an umbrella programme that covers multiple projects of various Central Ministries/Departments and States/UTs. Some of the major initiatives related to public service delivery are as follows:

-  Common Services Centres -  CSCs are offering government and business services in digital mode in rural areas through Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs). Over 400 digital services are being offered by these CSCs. So far, 5.31 Lakh CSCs are functional (including urban & rural areas) across the country, out of which, 4.20 Lakh CSCs are functional at Gram Panchayat level.
-  Unified  Mobile  Application  for  New-age  Governance  (UMANG) -  for  providing  government services to citizen through mobile. More than 1,570 government services and over 22,000 bill payment services are made available at UMANG.
-  e-District Mission Mode Project (MMP): e-District project has been implemented at district and subdistrict  levels  of  all  States/UTs,  benefitting  all  citizens  by  delivering  various  e-Services  such  as Certificates  (Birth,  Caste,  Death,  Income  and  Local  Resident),  Pension  (Old  Age,  Disability  and Widow), Electoral, Consumer Court, Revenue Court, Land Record and services of various departments such  as  Commercial  Tax,  Agriculture,  Labour,  Employment  Training  &  Skill  Development  etc. Presently 4,671 e-services have been launched in 709 districts across India.
-  DigiLocker: It is facilitating paperless availability of public documents. Digital Locker has more than 11.7 crore users and more than 532 crore documents are made available through DigiLocker from 2,167 issuer organisations.
-  Unified  Payment Interface (UPI) is  the  leading  digital  payment  platform.  It  is  integrated  with  330 banks  and  facilitated  over  586  crore  monthly  transactions  worth  over  Rs  10  lakh  crore  has  been facilitated for the month of June, 2022.
-  CO-WIN It is an open platform for management of registration, appointment scheduling & managing vaccination certificates for Covid-19. More than 203 crore vaccination doses and 110 crore registrations have been facilitated by co-win.
-  MyGov It  is  a  citizen engagement platform that is developed to facilitate participatory governance. More than 2.48 crore users are actively using MyGov.
-  MeriPehchaan  National  Single  Sign-on  platform  called  MeriPehchaan  has  been  launched  in  July 2022 to facilitate / provide citizens ease of access to government portals.
-  MyScheme This  platform  has  been  launched  in  July  2022  to  facilitate  citizens  to  avail  eligibilitybased services.
-  Direct  Benefit  Transfers  315  Schemes  across  53  Ministries  are  offering  Aadhaar  enabled  direct benefit transfer to citizens. So far, Rs 24.3 lakh crore has been disbursed through DBT platform.
-  Diksha - Diksha is a national level educational platform that helps students and teachers to participate, contribute and leverage a common platform to achieve learning goals at scale for the country. As on 27 th July 2022, 7,633 courses are available and more than 15 crore enrolments have been done.
- (b):  Some of the major digital initiatives taken by the Government for welfare of farmers are as follows:
-  National Agriculture Market (e-NAM): Government of India has launched National Agriculture Market (e-NAM)  Scheme  with  the  objective  of  creating  online  transparent  competitive  bidding  system  to facilitate farmers with remunerative prices for their produce. More than 1.73 crore farmers & 2.26 lakh traders have been registered on e-NAM platform. Also, 1000 mandis of 18 States and 3 UTs have been integrated with e-NAM platform.
-  M-KISAN - mKisan Portal (www.mkisan.gov.in) for sending advisories on various crop related matters to  the  registered  farmers  through  SMSs.  In  mkisan  more  than  5.13  crore  farmers  are  registered  for receiving crop advisories through SMS. More than 2,462 crore mobile based advisories have been sent to farmers to assist them in their farming activities.
-  One  Stop  Window-Farmers  Portal  (www.farmer.gov.in)  for  dissemination  of  information  on  various agricultural  related  matter  including,  seeds  variety,  Storage  Godown,  Pests  and  plant  diseases,  Best Agricultural Practices, Watershed, Mandi details etc.
-  Soil Health Card - It provides soil related information to facilitate farmers in farming activities. More than 22 crore soil health cards have been printed and dispatched to farmers.
-  Mobile based advisory system for agriculture & Horticulture (M4AGRI) - It is mobile based advisory system  for  agriculture  and  horticulture.  It  has  been  implemented  in  the  North-East  States  namely Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh.
- (c):    The  Government  has  taken  following  steps  in  direction  of  data  governance  for  socio-economic development in the country. The brief details are as follows:
-  Open Government Data - To facilitate data  sharing  and  promote  innovation  over  non-personal  data, Open  Government  Data  platform  has  been  developed.  More  than  5.65  lakh  datasets  across  12,800+ catalogues are published. The platform has facilitated 93.5 lakh downloads.
-  API Setu - To facilitate data exchange among the system, API Setu has been developed as a platform. The platform has more than 2100 APIs, and 1000+ user organisations.
-  MeitY has prepared the draft National Data Governance Framework Policy which aims to realize the full  potential  of  India's  digital  government vision, maximize the efficiency of data-led governance & public service delivery and to catalyze data-based research and innovation. Currently the draft policy is under finalization. MeitY released the Draft National Data Governance Framework Policy on 26 th May 2022 for public consultation.
- (d): The Government  has  already  taken  necessary  measures  to  tackle  challenges  with  regard  to  data privacy  and  data  security  through  administering  the  Information  Technology  (IT)  Act,  2000  which  has necessary provisions for data privacy and data security.