Harnessing Technology for Government-Citizen Connect: Rajendra Kumar, MeitY
“India has made it to the top 10 in the Global Cyber-security Index (GCI) 2020 launched by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on June 29, 2021, moving up 37 places to rank as the tenth best country in the world on key cyber-safety parameters. Further, India has been ranked fourth in the Global Cyber-security Index 2020 in the Asia-Pacific region with an overall score of 97.50. India is emerging as a global IT superpower, asserting its digital sovereignty with firm measures to safeguard data privacy and online rights of the citizen”, asserted Rajendra Kuma, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and IT, Government of India in a tete-a-tete with Poulami Chakraborty of BW Businessworld.
While technology has impacted citizen’s life in a big way, especially during recent times, transforming it digitally, however, security of digital platforms is of prime importance and calls for superior policy implementation and attention. It is not restricted to a single level but needs to be addressed at business (defining security policies), infrastructure (appropriate configurations at network, data centre, and hardware), application (Application deployment, OS hardening) and data (storage, access) levels. Rajendra Kumar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, decoded the legalities, framework and more about innovations in the Digital India program. Read on to explore.
Four years after the completion of the Digital India Mission, Could you account us for the key achievements of the department for India’s Digital Transformation?
Technology has been a great enabler for governance and service delivery to citizens and businesses. The Digital India programme was launched in 2015 to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.
The Digital India programme in the last few years has changed the digital profile of India. So far, Digital India has significantly contributed to the digital transformation of India. By adopting a citizen-centric approach in delivering services with the latest technologies, the quality of governance has changed remarkably in rural areas. However, transforming the entire rural populace into a digitally empowered society under this flagship programme is a huge challenge, especially in remote areas. To deal with it, Digital India has emphasized using the most advanced ICT by leveraging various existing infrastructures in an integrated manner that may drive processes to their desirable output in a minimum timeframe with almost zero scopes of manipulation and minimum operability.
There have been many very remarkable achievements under the Digital India Programme. Some of the key achievements are as follows:
What are the key challenges that you faced while engaging in this transformational mandate? How have you been able to mitigate these challenges?
The primary challenges faced while implementation of Digital India programme is digital literacy and digital connectivity. The government has already taken necessary measures to tackle these challenges through implementing “Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA)” to bridge the digital divide in the country to cover 6 crore rural households and BharatNet project with the aim to connect all 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats (GPs) in the country with 100 Mbps connectivity.
Please share with us how the department has been able to leverage IT for e-Governance during the Covid times and before. Precisely, if you can account to use on the transformation with time.
COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an unprecedented demand for digital health technology solutions. In these tough times, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has emerged as a key means for resolving challenges caused by the pandemic particularly identification, isolation, contact tracing, and treatment to deal with the evolving situation in the country.
Under the aegis of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), the Government of India has started various e-Governance initiatives in the healthcare sector intending to make technology-enabled citizen-centric healthcare services available to the citizens in India.
AarogyaSetu application
With more technologies setting in, there certainly had been the advent of more and more security concerns and challenges. How had that been dealt with by the department?
Security of digital platforms is of prime importance and it should be considered even while conceptualizing any development. Security is not confined to a single level but needs to be addressed at business (defining security policies), infrastructure (appropriate configurations at network, data centre, and hardware), application (Application deployment, OS hardening) and data (storage, access) levels. It is least costly and most effective to plan for and implement security-specific functions in the Target Architecture as early as possible in the platform development cycle to avoid costly retrofit or rework because the required building blocks for security were not added or used during systems development and deployment.
With the advent of technology that has eased the life of human being, a large number of aspects of daily needs and necessities are available with one click. But like every coin has two sides, technology also has a dark parameter attached to it. World Wide Web has provided ample opportunities and has also brought certain measures for illegal activities to flourish with anonymity.
While administering the IT Act, 2000, MeitY has the specific responsibility to ensure: better internet governance, data protection, cybersecurity, privacy over the Internet, promotion and regulation of technology companies and promotion of e-governance
The Information Technology Act has adequate provisions to provide a regulatory framework to address the following issues and challenges:
- cybercrimes,
- illegal access on devices, computer systems and data,
- illegal interferences (through data input, alteration, and suppression) on devices, data and computer systems,
- illegal interception on devices, computer systems and data,
- Online identity and data theft, etc.
It is noteworthy to mention that India has made it to the top 10 in the Global Cyber-security Index (GCI) 2020 launched by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on June 29, 2021, moving up 37 places to rank as the tenth best country in the world on key cyber-safety parameters. Further, India has been ranked fourth in the Global Cyber-security Index 2020 in the Asia-Pacific region with an overall score of 97.50. India is emerging as a global IT superpower, asserting its digital sovereignty with firm measures to safeguard data privacy and the online rights of citizens.
Would you share with us the budget allocation for this mandate?
Digital India is an umbrella programme that covers multiple projects of various central Ministries/Departments & States/UTs. Each project has its budgetary requirement and accordingly project plan has been charted out by the implementing Ministry/departments and budget details are being maintained by concerned Ministries/Departments & States/UTs. The budget allocated under the Digital India programme during this year is over Rs. 3,000 crores.
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