‘Digital India’ project makes governance more accountable

NEW DELHI: Pitching his pet Digital India initiative with the titans of the IT world during the last several months, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised and pledged to make governance more accountable and transparent while assuring data privacy and security.

He has already announced plans to create more public Wi-Fi spots including at 500 railway stations across India and an aggressive expansion of the National Optical Fiber Network to take broadband to 600,000 villages.
India is the world’s largest sourcing destination for the information technology (IT) industry, accounting for approximately 67 percent of the $124-130 billion market.
The industry employs about 10 million work force. More importantly, the industry has led the economic transformation of the country and altered the perception of India in the global economy.
India’s cost competitiveness in providing IT services, which is approximately 3-4 times cheaper than the US, continues to be the mainstay of its unique selling proposition (USP) in the global sourcing market.
India, however, is also gaining prominence in terms of intellectual capital with several global IT firms setting up their innovation centers in India.
The IT industry has also created significant demand in the Indian education sector, especially for engineering and computer science.
The Indian IT industry is divided into four major segments — IT services, business process management (BPM), software products and engineering services, and hardware.
The IT-BPM sector in India grew at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15 percent over 2010-15, which is 3-4 times higher than the global IT-BPM spend, and is estimated to expand at a CAGR of 9.5 percent to $300 billion by 2020.
With the launch of Digital India program, the Indian government is taking a big step forward to transform the country into a digitally empowered knowledge economy.
The Indian Ministry of Communications and IT is the nodal agency to implement the program.
Apps for Digital India Portal are MyGov Mobile App, Swachh Bharat Mission App and Aadhaar Mobile Update App.
The digital India program is centered on three key vision areas — Digital infrastructure as a core utility to every citizen; Governance and services on demand, digital empowerment of citizens.
With the above vision, the Digital India program aims to provide broadband highways, universal access to mobile connectivity, public Internet access program, and E-governance.
Under the program, the Digital Locker System aims to minimize the usage of physical documents and enable sharing of e-documents across agencies.
The sharing of the e-documents will be done through registered repositories thereby ensuring the authenticity of the documents online.
MyGov.in has been implemented as a platform for citizen engagement in governance, through a “Discuss”, “Do” and “Disseminate” approach. 
The mobile App for MyGov would bring these features to users on a mobile phone.

Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) Mobile app would be used by people and Government organizations for achieving the goals of Swachh Bharat Mission. On the other hand, eSign framework allows citizens to digitally sign a document online using Aadhaar authentication.
The Online Registration System (ORS) under the eHospital application has been introduced. 
This application provides important services such as online registration, payment of fees and appointment, online diagnostic reports, enquiring availability of blood online etc.
Also, the National Scholarships Portal is a one stop solution for end to end scholarship process right from submission of student application, verification, sanction and disbursal to end beneficiary for all the scholarships provided by the government of India.
It is also important to note that the BSNL has introduced Next Generation Network (NGN), to replace 30 year old exchanges, which is an IP based technology to manage all types of services like voice, data, multimedia/ video and other types of packet switched communication services.
BSNL has undertaken large scale deployment of Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the country. The user can latch on the BSNL Wi-Fi network through their mobile devices.
To deliver citizen services electronically and improve the way citizens and authorities transact with each other, it is imperative to have ubiquitous connectivity.
The government also realizes this need as reflected by including ‘broadband highways’ as one of the pillars of Digital India. 
While connectivity is one criterion, enabling and providing technologies to facilitate delivery of services to citizens forms the other.
According to India’s Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, 10 states including Maharashtra, Madhya Prasad, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Haryana and Chhattisgarh, are rolling the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) to facilitate Digital India.
These measures go hand in hand with the growth of IT in India. In fact, the Indian Information Technology (IT) sector is expected to grow 11 percent per annum and triple its current annual revenue to reach $350 billion by 2025, as per National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM).
India, the fourth largest base for new businesses in the world and home to over 3,100 tech start-ups, is set to increase its base to 11,500 tech start-ups by 2020, as per a report by NASSCOM and Zinnov Management Consulting Pvt Ltd. India’s Internet economy is expected to touch Rs 10 trillion ($151.6 billion) by 2018, accounting for 5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).
India’s Internet user base reached over 350 million by June 2015, the third largest in the world, while the number of social media users grew to 143 million by April 2015 and smartphones grew to 160 million.
Public cloud services revenue in India is expected to reach $838 million in 2015, growing by 33 percent year-on-year, as per a report by Gartner Inc.
In yet another Gartner report, the public cloud market alone in the country was estimated to treble to $1.9 billion by 2018 from $638 million in 2014. Increased penetration of Internet (including in rural areas) and rapid emergence of e-commerce are the main drivers for continued growth of data center co-location and hosting market in India.
On the other hand, the Indian IT’s core competencies and strengths have attracted significant investments from major countries.
The computer software and hardware sector in India attracted cumulative Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows worth $18.17 billion between April 2000 and September 2015, according to data released by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).
Some of the major developments in the Indian IT and ITeS sector are also noteworthy. Wipro Ventures, Wipro’s $100 million corporate venture arm, plans to invest in early-stage venture capital (VC) funds based in the US to pursue a strategy of investing/partnering country-focussed VCs.
Housejoy, an online home services provider, has raised Rs 15 million ($22.4 million) in a Series B round of funding led by Amazon, and which also includes new investors such as Vertex Ventures, Qualcomm and Ru-Net Technology Partners.
Global private equity (PE) firm Blackstone Group has acquired a minority stake in an Indian travel, transportation and logistics software firm, IBS Software, for $170 million, by buying the stake from General Atlantic and few other shareholders.
India’s top-tier information technology (IT) company, Infosys Ltd, has bought a minority stake worth $3 million in Whoop, which is a US-based start-up that makes activity trackers worn by athletes.
Microsoft Ventures is planning to incubate 500 start-ups in India in the next five years with a vision to create a viable and profitable business out of the booming start-up sector in India.
 Referring to other major plans in IT sector, a report said that the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) plans to open four more tech start-up incubation centers in different parts of India, in addition to existing three, in support of government of India’s ‘Start-up India’ initiative. Nasscom Foundation, a non-profit organization which is a part of Nasscom, has partnered with SAP India to establish 25 National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM) centers in 12 cities across India, as a part of government of India’s Digital India initiative.
A recent study by research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) suggests that India may soon be able to catch up with the global technology trends that have disrupted enterprises, industry and the way consumers behave and transact.
This is evident from the fact that Indian e-commerce industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 35 percent to reach $100 billion size in the next five years, as per a study by Assocham-PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Also, India has partnered with major countries in IT sector. India and the United States have agreed to jointly explore opportunities for collaboration on implementing India’s ambitious $18.22 ‘Digital India Initiative’.
India is working with many other countries including Saudi Arabia in IT sector. Wipro Arabia is one of the few major IT companies successfully operating in Saudi Arabia.
The Digital India is a major national project launched by Modi on July 1, 2015.