Transformation brought by these e-services

Categories
Yojana/Kurukshetra
Published
5th Sep, 2019

By ensuring digital access, digital inclusion and digital empowerment, the Digital India Programme has harnessed digital technologies to bring about a positive change towards good governance that is easy, economical, transparent and efficient governance.
These e-services have made the slogan ‘Maximum Governance, Minimum Government’ a reality. It is a conscious strategy towards ushering reforms in governance and transforming country by making governance simple, fast, flexible and effective by application of innovations and technology.
These e-services has led to participative governance, a key element of a responsible democracy.
It has reduced the human interface in delivering services to the people and has also enhanced the experience of the citizens, while also providing them with enormous opportunities.
Through the application of digital technologies, the Government is undertaking specific initiatives to improve the delivery systems to ensure that the benefits of the welfare schemes of the government reach directly to the targeted beneficiaries, including the poorest of the poor in a convenient manner without any pilferage.
India has moved ahead from the era of dongles/keys required for digital signatures-with the advent of Aadhaar based eSign that is an easy, efficient and secure way to sign and authenticate documents digitally. This eKYC based authentication enhances service delivery experience of citizens and can be used anywhere, anytime.
In order to ensure growth of the digital economy while keeping personal data of citizens secure and protected, the Government is working on privacy protection through enabling Personal Data Protection Framework.
The advent of technologies and its fast adoption has generated huge and personalised data that can be used to alleviate societal problems relating to areas, such as, health, food security, transport and urban planning.

Promotion of welfare for the Differently Abled

Citizens with disability use assistive technology to access various modes of ICT channels such as web portal, mobile application, kiosk, etc.
Blind or visually impaired citizen would use screen reader which would provide audio output of operating system and its application such as Windows OS, Microsoft office, Google Chrome, etc.
Various computer programmers of India have contributed significant amount of effort to enhance features of open source windows screen reader software which provide audio output of computer software’s.
Non-visual display access (NVDA), an open source screen reading software, is now available in 7 Indian languages comprising of Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Kannada and Indian English.
In the era of mobile app; hear to read is a text to speech (TTS) app which is developed for Indian language for Android such as for Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.
The disabled community can independently book cab through iPhone/Android using voice over /talkback feature which provide audio output of mobile app.
Home delivery food ordering based apps can also be used by persons with disability with ease as they comply to digital accessibility international standard.
Convenience of enjoying online shopping from home or anywhere through online shopping sites can also be availed by community of citizens with disability empowering them to overcome their mobility constraint.

Special E-Governance Initiatives for the Differently Abled

Avaz:
- It is an alternative and augmentative communication device.
- It works by generating speech from limited muscle movements like that from the head or by the hand, and is used by people with speech disorders such as cerebral palsy, autism, intellectual disability, and aphasia.
- It was widely used as a communication device, and was subsequently converted into an app for the i-Pad and for Android tablets.
- This device is 90 per cent cheaper than the devices which are available in developed countries and cater to Indian languages.
Kabi:
- It is an app for speech impaired children.
- It assists them for quick communication with the external world by selecting pictograph image on their hand held Android devices.
Blee watch:
- It is a smart watch especially designed for the needs of hearing impaired citizens.
- The watch enables recording emergency sounds like doorbell, fire alarm, baby's cry into the connected app.
- Whenever that sound is played next, Blee Watch notifies the user with unique vibration patterns, colours and icons. It also indicates the feel of music even if it is not being heard. Blee Watch converts sound into vibration patterns. The user can then express through dance on the basis of these vibration patterns.

E-Governance Initiatives for the Inclusion of the Differently Abled

e-Services has also led to financial inclusion of citizens with disability. Earlier blind and visually impaired had to suffer consequences of cheque being dishonoured on account of variation in individual signature but today digital channel has solved this problem to a large extent by online transactions through web portal or mobile app instead of cheque based instruments.
DAISY forum of India (DFI) in collaboration with Government of India has launched Sugamya Pustakalaya, an online library of digital books in accessible format for print impaired citizens.
Government of Chhattisgarh has taken initiative of enabling citizens of Chhattisgarh to report emergency by- dialing 112. This central number integrates all three emergency services such as police, fire and ambulance working together to serve citizens during emergency situation. This app is equipped to respond to hearing impaired citizens through texting features and can interact in real time.