Government Plans New Initiatives To Boost Digital India Programme – With Mobile App, E-Governance Academy, & CITO Across Departments

The Ministry of Electronics and IT plans to deploy a Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO) across various departments of Government Ministries.

According to an official statement, under the Ministry’s ruling, a CITO will be appointed in 34 departments and Ministries. The officer will be answerable to the IT Secretary, Aruna Sundararajan.

In another step, with an aim to boost the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government’s Digital India programme, the Ministry has proposed to set up a National E-governance Academy. A fund of $74 Mn (INR 500 Cr) will be set aside for the same.

According to its official website, the Digital India programme is a flagship initiative of the Government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy.

The proposals were put on the table in a meeting between Ministry officials and Union Minister, Ministry of Information & Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, which took place earlier this month.

To further national e-governance, the Ministry has proposed launching a mobile app catering to the needs of e-governance called UMANG. The app will function as a common platform across India for all Government related services.

Talking about the app an official at the Ministry said, “The application is currently in the designing phase and it will integrate service applications for passports, income tax, health, women safety, scholarships, among others.”

Currently, the e-governance initiatives concerning Government services are managed and co-ordinated by the National E-governance division. With an officer in place now, the Ministry aims to put in place a direct line of coordination, the official added.

The agenda behind the National E-governance Plan is to integrate all government services for the country’s citizens on a single platform. “We are implementing Digital India as an umbrella programme to prepare India for knowledge-based transformation into a digitally empowered society,” said the official.

The Digital India programme currently focusses on areas including broadband, universal access to mobile connectivity, public internet access programme, e-governance, electronic delivery of services under the project e-Kranti, and IT jobs for citizens among others. Most of these initiatives are planned to be completed within the next three years.

In March 2016, the Government also launched an online marketing platform ‘Mahila E-Haat’. It was aimed at helping women entrepreneurs in rural parts of the country to sell products online to larger markets all across the country.

In further attempts to aid digitisation in India, Indian Railways has mandated Aadhaar card for booking train tickets throughout the country. Aadhaar card was already linked with LPG and passport services. The Government has also laid down a new set of rules and regulations to ensure data security and privacy for the Aadhaar project. Earlier this week Paytm also introduced Aadhaar-based eKYC( Know Your Customer) to make customer verification a real-time, paperless process.

This development was first reported by Vccircle.

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