Digital India programme: Ravi Shankar Prasad to meet state IT ministers on August 26

NEW DELHI: Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will meet IT ministers from the states on August 26 to discuss the road-map for implementing government's over Rs 1 lakh crore 'Digital India' programme.

The programme, approved by the Cabinet last week, aims to transform India into a digitally empowered-knowledge economy and seeks to integrate technology in everyday life of the citizens for better service delivery.

The day-long meeting will have ministers and senior officials deliberating on issues like implementation and delivery of various eServices, National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), electronic manufacturing and Common Service Centres ( CSC) among others, sources said.

Apart from Prasad, Department of Telecom (DoT) Secretary Ramesh Garg, Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY) R S Sharma and other senior officials from the departments will be present, they added.

The umbrella programme - which will be monitored by a committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi - includes projects that aim to ensure that government services are available to citizens electronically and people get benefit of the latest information and communication technology.

The programme will be implemented in phases from the current year till 2018.

The government's vision under Digital India includes creation of ICT infrastructure like high speed Internet at gram panchayat level, on demand availability of government services like health, education etc and digital empowerment of citizens specially through digital literacy.

The Digital India programme is a transformed version of the already running National e-Governance Plan.

The government has identified nine pillars as growth areas. These pillars are - 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.