Digital India: Government digitises characters of 20 lakh public records

NEW DELHI: The government has digitised about 20 lakh characters of citizen and public records using its Digitize India Platform (DIP) as part of the Digital India programme. DIP, launched in July by the Department of Electronics and IT, aims to digitise physical records and reduce piles of papers stored in record rooms or offices of government departments, public sector organisations and autonomous bodies. Instead of outsourcing the entire digitisation process to a third party, the government is hoping to crowdsource the effort.

"We have so far digitised some 20 lakh characters already," Dinesh Tyagi, CEO of the common service centresspecial purpose vehicle, the platform operator for DIP, told ET. Organisations can submit their records for digitisation to the DIP, preferably as scanned images. In case they submit physical records, they will have to pay for the scanning separately.

It is here that crowdsourcing kicks in. Anyone with an Aadhaar number can register and log in to the DIP. The algorithm breaks down every word or phrase in a document and sends it to two randomly chosen users. Each user digitises the word and submits it back. If the digitisation efforts of both persons match, they get rewarded as per number of characters digitised. The user keeps accumulating rewards and whenever he or she wishes, the amount can be credited to their bank account.