Union Cabinet on 20 August 2014 approved the Digital India Programme. The programme is worth 1 lakh crore rupees and seeks to transform the Indian economy into a digitally empowered knowledge economy.
The Digital India programme is a transformed version of the already running National e-Governance Plan. The programme will be implemented in phases from 2014 till 2018.
Aim of the Programme
The project aims to provide thrust to nine growth areas. These are: broadband highways, everywhere mobile connectivity, Public Internet Access Programme, e-Governance, e-Kranti (which aims to give electronic delivery of services), information for all, electronics manufacturing, IT for Jobs and early harvest programmes.
Projects included in the program aim to ensure that government services are available to citizens electronically and people get benefit of the latest information and communication technology.
Vision of the Programme
The vision of government under Digital India project includes creation of ICT infrastructure like high speed Internet at gram panchayat level, on demand availability of government services like health, education etc, and digital empowerment of citizens especially through digital literacy.
Monitoring of the Programme
The programme will monitored by a committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) will accord approval for projects.
A Digital India Advisory Group will be formed and will be chaired by the Union Minister of Communications and IT.
There will be an Apex Committee which will be chaired by the Cabinet Secretary and the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) or Committee on Non Plan
Expenditure (CNE).
Implementation of the Programme
Government will prefer to adopt Public Private Partnerships (PPP) wherever feasible for rolling out Digital India programme.
Apart for existing e-governance projects, government will restructure National Informatics Centre which facilitates roll out of IT projects in government departments.
Government will create positions of Chief Information Officers (CIO) in at least 10 key ministries so that various e-Governance projects could be designed, developed and implemented faster.
Besides, the Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY) would create necessary senior positions within the department for managing the programme.
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