Government to meet IT ministers from all states to take forward Modi's Digital India project

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The government is expected to invest over Rs 1 lakh crore in the programme, which Modi enlisted as top priority in his Independence Day speech.

New Delhi: In a bid to take forward Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India project, Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will meet IT ministers from all states on Tuesday to lay out a roadmap for its implementation. The government is expected to invest over Rs 1 lakh crore in the programme, which Modi enlisted as top priority in his Independence 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.

(With additional information from PTI)