India under PM Modi leading 21st century's digital revolution: Union Minister Jitendra Singh

India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leading the 21st century's digital revolution, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said here while delivering the inaugural address at the two-day 24th national conference on e-governance that began on Friday.

He said, India has emerged as a data powerhouse in the world and it is taking all steps under the leadership of the Prime Minister for data protection through legislative and other measures.

Dwelling on the conference theme "India's techade – digital governance in a post pandemic world", the minister said, digital India has helped easy access to services for millions of people, particularly the poor and needy in the country. Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel, said, whether it's issuance of Aadhar card, driving licence, birth certificate or payment of electricity bill, water bill, or income tax return, these can now be processed via digital India platform faster & easily and even in villages, these things are being done through common service centres.

He said that the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) has been adopted and implemented across all the central ministries/ departments, attached, subordinate and autonomous bodies and the year 2021 witnessed 21 lakh public grievances cases being received on it with 19.95 lakh cases being redressed. With the implementation of CPGRAMS reforms mapping last mile grievance officers, over 68,000 grievance officers have been mapped on the CPGRAMS system and the grievance redressal time during the pandemic was an average 1.45 days, the minister was quoted as having said in a statement issued by Union Personnel Ministry. Going forward, the CPGRAMS reforms will be implemented in another 20 ministries/departments in 2022 taking the cumulative number of ministries adopting CPGRAMS version 7.0 to 40, he added.

K T Rama Rao, Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development, Industries, Information Technology Electronics and Communications, government of Telangana, V Srinivas, Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG), government of India, Somesh Kumar, Chief Secretary, government of Telangana and Rajendra Kumar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), government of India, among others took part in the inaugural ceremony.

Singh said that several successful initiatives have been brought about by governments in making services faceless, paperless and cashless through electronic service delivery and subsidy disbursement using Aadhar enabled system. The minister recognised 26 successful initiatives in the areas of excellence in e-governance and underlined that it is also important to establish benchmarks and undertake independent assessments as we move forward in improving digital governance models.

Singh said that Telangana is one of India's most advanced states in digital governance using technology for good governance in industry and commerce as also for good governance in social welfare and development. He noted with satisfaction that the initiatives of government of Telangana found recognition in the good governance index 2021. Telangana's Janahita platform has been recognised as amongst the best functional grievance redressal platforms of India, the statement said.

The minister in his concluding remarks said that the national conference has given us a platform to recognise the achievements in the e-governance domain and we will acknowledge and award those today who are working faithfully in making this decade India's "techade". He said, the conference strives to promote the inherent potential that lies within a digital revolution and establish a blend of both-competitive and collaborative spirit.

The conference was organised by DARPG and MeitY, government of India, in association with the state Government of Telangana.