The government of India has taken the initiative to push for overall technological development of the country. The Prime Minister of India recently announced the launch of Digital India Week to introduce information technology to every individual household in the country.
Introduced in a corporate event, the initiative was received with great enthusiasm by who’s who of Corporate India. In response to the announcement, the corporate community showed its support by pledging close to $71 billion on the very first day. The pledged amount will be used for various technology ventures which can potentially create over 1.8 million jobs.
As per the current outline, the digital programs to be implemented as part of Digital India initiative includes DigiLocker – a cloud based digital locker to store documents, e-Sign with Aadhar (Unique Identification Number), National Scholarship Portal, e-Hospital system, Centre of Excellence for Internet of Things and high-speed digital highway for governance. Blockchain technology may soon be included into the list due to increased interest shown by tech and finance industry.
The DigiLocker Service has been already launched by the government of India earlier this year. Currently in its beta stage, DigiLocker is a cloud based digital document storage platform that allow users to upload digital copies of all important documents. Along with storage space, it will also enable registered users to digitally sign the saved documents as well.
With DigiLocker, people can keep all their documents saved and stored in one place so that it can be easily accessed by the owner from anywhere. It is a first step towards creating a truly paperless governance in the country, it will enable individuals to submit a link to the corresponding ID or document whenever requested by a government office or institutions.
The development of DigiLocker and government’s entry into Internet of Things has opened up lot of opportunities for Bitcoin technology enthusiasts and entrepreneurs to get involved in upcoming projects. The proposed Centre for Excellence for Internet of Things will be involved in developing technologies related to IoT while encouraging, training and promoting local talent.
Currently DigiLocker uses conventional architecture along with two factor authentication to provide a secure data storage, retrieval and management. We can expect the DigiLocker facility to be incorporated into Blockchain for better security and transparency. By doing so, it will further reduce the load on government’s IT infrastructure, as people will be able to share the hash key for documents directly with the institution or organizations requesting for verification purposes.
The country is encouraging adoption of electronic transactions instead of cash payments to bring in accountability and increase the efficiency of economic system. Digital currency has also garnered the interest of the Reserve Bank of India’s governor. We can expect the Indian Bitcoin community to grow huge as internet connectivity improves across the country.