Digital vans all set to take e-governance to rural areas

The Hindu

Government’s new initiative:

• The government will roll out a new campaign under which 66 digital vans.
• Van will be equipped with Internet and audio-visual facilities, will go to 657 districts by March 2017 to increase awareness about various e-governance services in rural and semi-urban areas.

Aim:

• To reach out to more than 10 lakh citizens and register over 1.5 lakh rural citizens for MyGov, digital locker, Aadhaar and other digital services.
• These vans would cover more than 13 lakh km in 13,200 man days.
• The campaign will be flagged off by Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad at a conference to present the report card of the Ministry’s two years in office.
• It will run from May 30, 2016 to March 31, 2017.
• The vans will use the Internet and audio visual facilities to interact with and educate the people in rural areas, especially the youth, about the various Digital India initiatives.

State government’s role:

• State governments, along with the Department of Posts, Department of Telecommunications (BSNL) and CSC-SPV, will play an active role in the execution of this campaign.
• A district level committee, headed by the District Collector, will foresee its ground level execution to ensure that the maximum benefit is generated out of this campaign.

34 districts in phase 1

• During phase 1 of the campaign till July 2016, some 16 vans will cover 34 districts in nine States — Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.

Service in 14 languages

• Rural citizens will be informed about the services offered at CSC centres, national scholarship portal, e-hospital, digital lockers and Aadhaar in 14 languages — Hindi, English, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Oriya, Bengali, Assamese, Manipuri, Urdu, Marathi and Malayalam.