Statement of the Delegation of India on Agenda Item 3 (b) on Digital Development'

at

The 18thsession of Commission on science and Technology for Development

May6, 2015; Geneva

Madam Chairperson,

At the outset, my delegation would like to thank the Secretary General for a comprehensive report on the Agenda Item 3(b) on Digital Development. The report provides a very good overview of the changing digital development landscape and lays out the broad agenda for digital development with regard to digital technologies, digital demographics and development priorities.

India acknowledges the importance of ICTs as an enabler of cross-sectoral development goals and fully recognizes the need of universalizing access to a wide range of services and applications in diverse sectors such as education, health, agriculture, employment, financial inclusion, government services, social inclusion, gender equity, and empowerment of the differently abled persons.

Rapid strides have been made in facilitating effective digital development through emphasis in four policy areas identified viz. digital ecosystem, digital inclusion, digital sustainability and digital threats. However, significant gaps remain in implementation of digital development in the developing countries and specifically in the least developed ones. The Secretary General’s report rightly highlights these concern areas and, if not addressed urgently,there will be adverse implications on economic and social development opportunities in these countries.

Madam Chairperson,

India has made rapid progress in facilitating digital development through recently conceived‘Digital India’ programme, which is envisioned to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. The programme is centered on three vision areas, namely, Digital Infrastructure as a Utility to Every Citizen, Governance & Services on Demand and Digital Empowerment of Citizens. The focus is on providing easy access to eServices, on any time anywhere basis, as well as making the country ready for ease of doing business. Majority of the initiatives under ‘Digital India’ programme is set to be realized within next three years.

The vision of Digital India will be achieved by implementing 9 pillars namely Broadband Highways, Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity, Public Internet Access Programme, e-Governance: Reforming Government through Technology, e-Kranti - Electronic Delivery of Services, Information for All, Electronics Manufacturing, IT for Jobs and Early Harvest Programmes. Each of these components is a complex programme in itself and cut across multiple Government Ministries and Departments.

India has made significant progress in providing access to Internet broadband to its population. With over 280 million Internet users, India has emerged as the third largest country in the world in Internet usage. With over 173 million mobile internet users across the country, mobile broadband is also poised for rapid expansion. However, availability, quality and affordability of access to broadband particularly in rural areas and availability of digital content and services remain major areas of concern.

To overcome such issues, a key component envisaged under Digital India is to provide high speed internet as a core utility to facilitate online delivery of various services, fast data transfer and carry out research and innovations to support development in far flung and difficult area of the country. It is planned to set up enabling infrastructure for digital identity, financial inclusion and ensure easy availability of common services centres. Through Digital India Programme, broadband connectivity would be ensured to every Gram Panchayats by 2016 through the ‘National Optical Fibre Network’. The existing Government networks and infrastructure including data centreswould also be integrated to ensure the availability of ICT infrastructure to citizens, schools, colleges, business etc.

In the last 8 years of implementation of India’s National e-Governance Plan, 25 out of the 31 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) have started deliveringeServices. Over 0.14 million Common Service Centres are operational as service delivery outlets across all States. An average of over 234 million e-Governance transactions per month in last 1 year have been reported by these 25 MMPs through e-Taal system(e-Transaction Aggregation & Analysis Layer is a online system developed by government to count  the number of services being delivered by any e-governance project).

Under the Digital India programme, with a view on promoting ‘Digital Inclusion’, India has set a target to have >10 Million skilled workforce, which will find their way in all the sectors especially IT/ITes and Telecom sector. National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) aims to provide the high speed bandwidth of 100 Mbps for both rural and urban areas right up to the Gram Panchayat level. The last mile bandwidth availability at village level and at individual level is also envisaged. In addition, India’s Common Service Centers i.e. a subcomponent of Digital India Programme aims to enlarge the scope of CSCs coverage from current 1 in 6 villages to 1 per Gram Panchayat. Currently there are over 0.14 million operational CSCs and the aim of CSC 2.0 is to have 0.25 million CSCs in the country.

India has put a major thrust on Mobile technology to deliver government services to citizens. Mobile First concept would be leveraged to ensure that government department prefers mobile based citizen centric service delivery. Mobile number as a digital Identity is another innovative area in which Government of India is working, whereby, each mobile number would be seeded with UIDAI’s Aadhaar number for delivery of services, authentication and authorization. More than 0.1 billion mobile transactions are being reported per month since past 6 months.

India also recognizes the need for reforming and automating Governance through Technology with focus on Government Process Reengineering, Electronic databases, Workflow automation for processes both inside the government and citizen centric service delivery, making use of IT in public grievance redressal.

India has further conceptualized e-Kranti (NeGP 2.0) as the fifth pillar of Digital India programme for mandatory Integration and Interoperability amongst Government Applications and Databases, Replication of successful eGovernance projects, Leveraging emerging technologies like Cloud, Mobile, security, Data Analytics, Social Media, In-memory database, Software Defined Network etc and expansion of portfolio of Mission Mode projects with focus on social sector MMPs. Existing MMPs / eGovernance Initiatives like Road Transport, Public Distribution System, eCourts, ePrisons are getting revamped to align them with transformational principles of e-Kranti.

India is a land of demographic dividends and by virtue of that it is a land of innovations too. The crowd sourcing is a special focus of the Government to source the best ideas for policy, project and implementation. MyGov Platform is being used in a major way for e-Participation, e-collaboration by citizen engagement and especially theyouths. On the other hand, initiative such as Open Data platform (Data.gov.in) have increased the e-Transparency wherein more than 87 Departments have published more than 14,627 datasets which have been viewed and used by 1.24 million users.

India has also established National Portal for Lost & Found children to facilitate real time information gathering and datasharing to find lost children quickly as well as ensure check on these types of crimes.

With a view on ‘Digital Inclusion’, India has laid special attention to the establishment of BPOs in the North Eastern Region of the country through appropriate incentives. In this regard, India has formulated the scheme “North East BPO Promotion Scheme (NEBPS)” to incentivize setting up of BPO/ Call Centres in the North Eastern Region.

“Digital India programme” is fully aligned with the “Make In India programme”, where, one of the major thrusts is on electronics manufacturing in India. India with a population of over 1.2 billion people offers a huge market for electronics sector. GoI is supporting the Clusters, Incubators, Integrated Circuits design, Mobile Manufacturing, Set top Box etc.

However, there are few challenges in terms of indigenous manufacturing, technology transfer and skilled resources and the Government is committed to create skilled workforce and provide financial support to promote electronics manufacturing in the country.

In order to tackle the issue of ‘Digital threats’, India has planned to set up National Cyber Security Co-ordination Centre which would provide actionable alerts to government departments in cases of perceived security threats thereby ensuring safe and secure cyber-space within the country.

In direction of achieving ‘Digital sustainability’, India has already notified e-Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011to provide collection, handling, storage and dismantling of e-waste, setting up of authorized e-waste collection centre, dismantling and recycling facilities.

India stands and will be pleased to contribute for effective digital development through development of a digital ecosystem, promoting digital inclusion / digital sustainability and tackling digital threats.

I thank you Madam Chairperson.

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