MAIT, an apex body representing IT Industry in India, has launched the Digital India Action Group (DIAG) to provide ideas for enriching and accelerating the rollout of Digital India programme across the country.

Drawing its members from major ICT companies as well as from the government, DIAG will strive to ensure the success of the Digital India programme by providing strategic inputs to various committees and teams that would be constituted under the aegis of the PMO, DeitY and other government departments and ministries.

Commenting on the vision of DIAG, Debjani Ghosh, vice president, MAIT, said, “Technology has the potential to connect the whole of India and benefit each & every citizen. Digital India should enable the percolation of technology to the people and each citizen should be able to access government services with ease.”

She further said that MAIT is best-suited to support and compliment the efforts of the government in implementing Digital India as it has a vast knowledge base from across the IT ecosystem, which can prove to be a game changer for this ambitious programme.

Ajai Chowdhry, founder, HCL, said that Digital India is a very ambitious programme as for the first time we are trying to look at a bigger picture or beyond the traditional scope of a typical e-governance programme. He said that now the focus should be to deeply analyse each & every piece of this paradigm and make it work in perfect harmony.

Gaurav Dwivedi, CEO, MyGov spoke on the relevance of e-governance in the Digital India programme and stated that: “As far as Digital India is concerned there are so many different elements like the way e-governance has progressed over the past few years. I see a complete paradigm shift as e- services now have become the center of every government organisation.”

Sanjeev Gupta, managing director, health & public service and corporate affairs, Accenture said, “The steps have been taken in the right direction and the initial ideation has done its job by exciting almost all the stakeholders. But now we need to get down to the brass-tacks and plan for early implementation of each of the nine pillars.”

DIAG would be led by an envisioning team (having representation from political leadership, senior levels of the government, eminent personalities from media, academia, science and technology) and there would be three dedicated workgroups which would work on the agendas related to digital infrastructure, digital governance and digital empowerment.

As an operating protocol, DIAG will have two-month agendas and after every two months, it would submit its recommendations & ideas to the government for its consideration (and appropriate inclusion in the Digital India programme). To start with, DIAG shall focus on e-governance, e-Kranti, broadband highways and electronics manufacturing.