Digital India Program - All you need to know

Last week PM Narendra Modi visited Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is the hub of IT industry of the world. Let's know about Digital India program :-

The Narendra Modi Cabinet gave approval for Digital India Program on 20 Aug 2014 an ambitious programme to “transform India into digital empowered society and knowledge economy”.

Conceptualized by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (Deity), Digital India Program will be put into operation from the current year till 2018.

Common Support Infrastructure:

1. Setting up of common and support IT infrastructure such as: 
2. State Wide Area Networks (SWANs), 
3. State Data Centres (SDCs), 
4. Common Services Centres (CSCs) and 
5. Electronic Service Delivery Gateways

To Reach 800 Million Rural Citizens till 2019 Government Have to Build Massive Digital Infrastructure

1. A $17-billion government program to build a national optical fiber network that will connect India’s village-level governments or gram panchayats, seek to cover the entire country in three years and could be a game changer, 
2. The entire country will be covered by broadband within three years and the internet will reach the remotest villages

Prime Minister Narendra Modi wishes to make sure so as to

1. A Smartphone in the hands of every citizen by 2019.
2. Currently, nearly 74% of the population has mobile phones, most of which though is in the hands of urban India.
3. All the services can be provided through a mobile handset, in particularly, health, education, all government services and retail

The government will create an enabling platform that will aid in delivering government services to citizens as well as services in the field of education, healthcare, entertainment and e-commerce. General Public services like land records and caste certificates will be made available online on demand online when this program will complete.

In combination among state governments, 20-hour e-literacy training programs in local languages will be conducted in 200,000 community service centres across the country.

Foreign Connections:-

1. The government also plans to hire at least 10 (CIOs) Chief information officer to oversee the Digital India program in key ministries, and create four other senior positions for dealing with adoption of standards and security aspects.
2. CISCO An American network equipment maker wanted to access benefits of cluster manufacturing.
3. Face book also expressed his interest to government of india in delivering governance programmes such as e-education.