Google Partners DigiLocker To Allow Storage Of Digital Documents On Android Devices

Tech giant Google has announced a partnership with the Indian government’s DigiLocker initiative to enable users to store their digital documents on Android devices.

The collaboration with the National eGovernance Division (NeGD) was announced at the company’s flagship ‘Google For India’ event on Monday (December 19). As part of this, the tech giant has essentially integrated DigiLocker services directly into the Files by Google app which will allow Indian users to directly access their digital documents on their phones. 

The app will store the files in an isolated environment on the device, which can only be accessed using a unique lockscreen authentication.

The move will enable the government to facilitate speedy delivery of services and to extend access to verified documents in a safe manner.

“With easy access to authentic digital documents, DigiLocker facilitates the speedy delivery of government benefits across financial inclusion, education, health initiatives and more. The government recognizes the role of key partnerships, and Google is an important and responsible tech player in the country that continues to offer helpful products and services to millions of Indians,” NeGD President and CEO Abhishek Singh said.

“We expect that DigiLocker’s integration and partnership on Android will drive smoother and ubiquitous access to digitized documents in a safe and secure manner for all our users,” he added.

Google also announced an overarching advanced artificial intelligence (AI) model at the event. Ram Papatla, general manager and India engineering lead of Android, said that the model will scan the phone and identify documents including government-issued PAN and Aadhaar cards and will label them into different folders.

Subsequently, this will then be leveraged in its integration with DigiLocker to store digital documents.

“Safety was a big part of the design process. For this feature, only you can access these documents and all of our machine learning models run on the device so no one, nor Google nor third party apps, can view these files…” added Papatla. 

Google For India Event 

The tech giant announced a slew of initiatives at its flagship event in New Delhi. The company announced ‘Project Bindi’ to mitigate fairness issues in publicly available natural language processing (NLP) models along with a paid learning service on YouTube called ‘Courses.’

The company also announced new initiatives in partnership with the Telangana government to support farmland digitisation through AI and support for early-stage and women-led startups through the India Digitization Fund. 

Google also announced a $1 Mn grant for the Indian Institute of Technology – Madras to set up the country’s first Center for Responsible AI, among several other India-focused initiatives for Indian search users. It also unveiled a new fraud detection model for digital payments on Google Pay. 

Earlier in the day, Google India head and vice-president Sanjay Gupta said that the Indian internet story has come of age, and added that the country’s tech industry is worth $230 Bn at the moment and is on its way to grow to $1 Tn in a few years. 

With more than 821 Mn broadband users in the country currently, Gupta said that India is on a growth momentum that would bring a billion Indians online by 2025.