From digital lockers to e-education: How Digital India will transform the country

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday launched his most ambitious Digital India programme, which aims at transforming the country into a digitally-empowered knowledge economy. The programme aims at bringing as many as 2.5 villages under broadband connectivity. The highlights of the Digital India programme, worth Rs 1 lakh crore, are digital locker, E-education, E-health and National Scholarship Portal. Here's a guide to each initiative launched under the Digital India programme:

Digital Locker:

PM Narendra Modi launched his most ambitious Digital India programme, which aims at transforming the country into a digitally-empowered knowledge economy.

Digital locker is a dedicated personal storage space for e-documents as well as Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of e-documents issued by government departments. The system will have an e-sign facility, which can be used to sign stored documents. Each locker is linked to the resident's Aadhar number.

The move is aimed at minimising the use of physical documents and provide authenticity to e-documents, thereby, giving secure access to documents issued by government. It will also reduce administrative overhead of government departments and agencies and make it easy for the residents to receive services.

E-Education:

As the name suggests, the programme is aimed at providing high-tech education using state-of-the-art technology to all. This programme can also be used to provide education in far-flung areas where it may not be possible for teachers to be present in person. The education can be imparted through virtual means as part of the programme.

E-health:

The E-health initiative, which is a part of Mission Digital India of the government, aims at providing timely, effective and economical healthcare services to all citizens. E-health is particularly relevant for masses that have little access to healthcare services in India. The programme looks at helping people maintain health records in a cost-effective manner. This is expected to be linked to the Aadhar number of citizens.

With this initiative, getting an OPD appointment, lab reports and blood availability in any government hospital becomes easy. Online Registration System (ORS) is a framework to link various hospitals across the country for Aadhaar based online registration and appointment system, where counter based OPD registration and appointment system through Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) has been digitalised.

Portal facilitates online appointments with various departments of different Hospitals using eKYC data of Aadhaar number, if patient's mobile number is registered with UIDAI. And in case mobile number is not registered with UIDAI, it uses patient's name.
New Patient will get appointment as well as Unique Health Identification (UHID) number. If Aadhaar number is already linked with UHID number, then appointment number will be given and UHID will remain same.

While visiting a hospital for the first time, one can skip the hassles of registration and other formalities by merely identifying self through the Aadhaar Number, select hospital and department, select date of appointment and get the same through SMS.

National Scholarship Portal:

The National Scholarships Portal is a one-stop solution for end-to-end scholarship process. From submission of student application, verification, sanction to disbursal to end beneficiary for all the scholarships provided by the government, this is an important tool of the Digital India initiative.

This move simplifies the process for students by providing common application form and one-time registration. SMS and e-mail alert would be sent to students at every step of scholarship process.