No dinosaurs in digital india please

No dinosaurs in digital india please

Digital India should not be hobbled by technological obsolescence in government services. All government agencies and regulators must ensure that internet-enabled services straddling governance, healthcare, commerce, education and finance keep pace with technological advancements, system design and evolving market practices. That is not the case right now.

Take the simple case of digital signatures, an important legal instrument for authentication and non-repudiation of documents and transactions. Over a dozen licensed certifying authorities issue Digital Signature Certificates (DSCs), some of which are sector-specific. But the process of issuing DSCs remains cumbersome: the implementation of the IT systems of many CAs leaves much to be desired to enable citizens to directly go online. Pray, why should the signature (issued by some CAs) be downloaded only on Internet Explorer 11, which its developer Microsoft has replaced with another browser, Edge, very similar to Google’s Chrome browser?

Such rigidity could prove harmful and all Digital India ecosystem service providers must strive constantly to be obsolescence-proof. The providers of services and implementers of IT systems must ensure updation of their design and roll-out of the system, undertake technology refresh regularly and revisit processes periodically. Government departments (such as India Post that has a payment bank licence) should have robust infrastructure: telecom connectivity (ubiquitous high-speed broadband) and stable power supply.

Similarly, public sector banks (PSBs) must upgrade their infrastructure to prevent digital transaction failure of the kind that resulted in 3% of digital payment attempts fail in September. PSBs have been worse hit than others.