Enhancing Citizens' Participation in the Processes of Governance: Digital India and MyGOV

Résumé

[extract] Digital India Program (DIP) is an ambitious umbrella programme of Government of India. It weaves together a large number of technologies with governance processes and services to empower Indian citizens around its three vision areas viz. “Digital Infrastructure as a Utility to Every Citizen”, “Governance and Services on Demand”, and “Digital Empowerment of Citizens”. These key areas of visions rest on nine pillars of Digital India ranging from provision of “Broadband for all” to its forty-four mission mode projects related to governance services under “e-Kranti” pillar to “IT for Jobs” and “Digital Literacy for All” and so on. DIP is not merely a great opportunity to develop the digital backbone of the country but also promises to deliver a real improvement in the quality of life of Indians by offering an on-demand easier access to governance and services using Internet, Mobile, Cloud based Digi-lockers, Common Service Centres-CSCs, Post offices, public Wi-Fi hotspots and much more. In fact majority of the activities and services delineated under government-to-government (G2G), government-to-businesses (G2B) and government-to-citizens (G2C) categories have been proposed to be delivered using technology through the aegis of DIP by means of innovative implementation models such as 4P model (Panchayat-Public-Private-Partnership). The proposed actions and services are further expected to be refined by all the stakeholders in an open and interactive manner using digital mechanisms such as portal of MYGOV. Further, DIP is also expected to bring all the digital activity to India by ushering in other related concepts such as Smart Cities and therefore lead to a ripple effect business opportunities in all the related sectors such as Software, Support, Hardware, Government Services and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES). The ultimate mission of DIP is to transform India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy by leveraging information technology (IT) as a growth engine of new India.