Govt Launches 23 New Schemes Under Digital India Mission; India Post Payment Bank, ePayment Portal & More

If the Governance under Atal Bihari Vajpayee is remembered for laying foundation of massive infrastructural projects, mainly in terms of highways; then the current PM Modi led Government would be remembered for laying foundation of massive Digital India platform in the country.

In one of the biggest push for Digital India mission, Government has launched 23 new programs aiming to empower Indians with Internet and Technology.

These new schemes have been devised to cater to four main objectives of Digital India: digital infrastructure, digital empowerment, on-demand government services and promotion of industry as a whole.

While inaugurating the new programs, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad asked all states to emulate these visionary programs, and empower the nation.

He said, “The basic objective should be to scale, because unless services are taken to the masses, digital inclusion will not succeed as asymmetry of information leads to asymmetry of opportunity..”

Top 5 schemes launched in this new push for Digital India:

1) National Centre of Geo-Informatics: With a budget of Rs 98.28 crore for three years, Govt. will develop an enhanced, advanced National Centre of Geo-Informatics. This GIS platform would be a hub of location based analytics and decision support system for planning public services across the nation. It would act as an independent division of Media Lab Asia, an organisation of DietY.

2) Payment Bank by India Post: By March 2017, India Post will launch their own Payment Bank across India. In this project, some of the biggest financial institutions such as World Bank and Barclays have shown interest to become a partner.

3) Data Centre for NIC at Bhuwaneshwara: A new 40,000 square feet Data Centre would be launched in Bhuwaneshwara for National Informatics Centre (NIC); which would be fully cloud-enabled. A budget of Rs 189 crore has been allocated for the same.

4) Special Manpower Development Program for Chips to System Design: With a budget outlay of 99.72 crore spread over 5 years, DEiTY has launched Special Manpower Development Program for Chips to System Design. This scheme will enable development of 50,000 specialized professionals in the area of VLSI and creation of 10 cluster projects for development of systems would be launched, to make India a super power electronics manufacturing and chip design industry.

5) PayOnline: National ePayment Gateway: A unique, one of its kind national ePayment gateway has been planned, using which every Indian citizen can easily make payments for all Government based transactions, ecommerce payments and other such related tasks. Collaboration with 67 banks has been envisioned for the same.

Other major projects include online labs for students for teaching science, Information Security and Awareness Programs, a renewed and more agile Software and Technology Parks (STPI) across the nation, Text to Speech technology for deeper penetration of Internet and Mobile across India and more.

Here are all the 23 new schemes announced by the Government under Digital India mission:

1. Inauguration of Wi-Fi hotspots at Har ki Pauri, Haridwar and Dargah Sharif, Ajmer;

2. Announcement of Pan India Free Incoming Roaming Facility for MTNL Customers from new year.

3. Launch of Post-Terminals (Rural ICT – RICT) – handing over Post Terminals to rural Post Masters.

4. Launch of National Centre of Geo-Informatics

5. Launch of e-Payment Portal

6. Launch of Olabs for Schools

7. Launch of Information Security Education and Awareness (ISEA) Phase-II

8. All India BPO Promotion Scheme

9. North East Business Process Outsourcing Promotion Scheme

10. Transfer of Technology for “ICT Centre on Tactile Graphics” at IIT Delhi

11. Announcement of Setting up of NIC Data Centre at Bhubaneswar

12. Initiating empanelment for private cloud Services providers

13. Digital Locker Mobile App

14. Transfer of Text To Speech Technology in 9 Indian Languages

15. Digital India Newsletter – English || 7 Digital India Newsletter – Hindi

16. Special Manpower Development Program for Chips to System Design

17. Launch of ISEA phase 2 programme

18. Announcement of Setting up of New STPI Centres

19. ToT “ICT Centre on Tactile Graphics” at IIT Delhi ( PH)

20. ToT Digital Programmable Hearing Aid (DPHA)

21. Cyber Security

22. Mobile Towers in Naxalite areas (LWE) in Madhya Pradesh

23. Dedication of 10 lakh connections with Next Generation Network (NGN) capacity