'India on verge of digital revolution, need to work without political bias'

Zee Media Bureau/Ritesh K Srivastava

New Delhi: Union Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday said that India is on the verge of a digital revolution and in order to meet the goal of total digitalisation we all need to work without political bias.

“India is on a verge of a digital revolution, but we have to work together without a political divide,” Prasad said ahead of meeting the state IT ministers here.

Quoting PM Narendra Modi, Prasad said the maximum use of Information Technology will make a better India tomorrow. “As Modi ji said India today + Information technology = India Tomorrow.”: RS Prasad on Digital India Programme announced by the Prime Minister during his Independence day speech.

Prasad made this remark ahead of his meting with the Information and Technology ministers from all states to discuss and prepare a blueprint for the successful implementation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious Digital India Project.

The IT ministers from all states and Ravi Shankar Prasad will hold deliberations on measures required to make the project successful.

The NDA government is expected to invest over Rs 1 lakh crore in the programme, which was announced by the Prime Minister during his Independence Day speech.

PM Modi had mentioned the Digital India Project as one of his government's top priorities during the I-Day speech.

The ambitious program focuses on e-governance and seeks to provide broadband connectivity to all villages by 2019. 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).

The Digital India programme is a transformed version of the already running National e-Governance Plan. The project aims to provide thrust to nine pillars identified as growth areas. These pillars include -- 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.

Under the Digital India programme, all central government ministries and departments will come up with their individual projects that can be delivered to public using ICT like health services, education, judicial services etc. 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.