Digital India is an initiative of Government of India to integrate the government departments and the people of India. It aims at ensuring the government services are made available to citizens electronically by reducing paperwork. The initiative also includes plan to connect rural areas with high-speed internet networks. Digital India has three core components. These include:

The creation of digital infrastructure Delivering Services Digitally
Digital literacy The project is slated for completion by 2019. A two-way platform will be created where both the service providers and the consumers stand to benefit. The scheme will be monitored and controlled by the Digital India Advisory group which will be chaired by the Ministry of Communications and IT. It will be an inter-ministerial initiative where all ministries and departments shall offer their own services to the public Healthcare, Education, Judicial services etc. The Public-private-partnership model shall be adopted selectively. In addition, there are plans to restructure the National Informatics Centre. This project is one among the top priority projects of the Modi Administration.

The initiative is commendable and deserves full support of all stakeholders. However, the initiative also lacks many crucial components including lack of legal framework, absence of privacy and data protection laws, civil liberties abuse possibilities, lack of parliamentary oversight for e-surveillance in India, lack of intelligence related reforms in India, insecure Indian cyberspace, etc.  These issues have to be managed first before introducing DI initiative in India. Digital India project is worth exploring and implementation despite its shortcomings that can be rectified before its implementation.

Challenges Before Digital India
The Government of India entity Bharat Broadband Network Limited which executes the National Optical Fibre Network project will be the custodian of Digital India (DI) project. BBNL had ordered United Telecoms Limited to connect 250,000 villages through GPON to ensure FTTH based broadband. This will provide the first basic setup to achieve towards DI and is expected to be completed by 2017.

The Digital India initiative is a promising initiative of the Indian Government. Many companies have shown their interest in this project. It is also believed that E-Commerce would facilitate the DI project. However, it is not free from challenges and legal hurdles. Some believe that DI cannot be successful till mandatory bcb e-governance services in India are introduced. Having incomplete implementation of the National e-Governance Plan of India will only affect the success of the DI project. India has regulations in the field of privacy protection data protection, cyber law, telegraph, e-governance, e-commerce, etc. Further, many legal experts believe that and Dl without cyber security is useless The security trends in India have exposed the vulnerability of Indian cyberspace. Even the National is not been implemented till now. Security Policy 2013  in these circumstances, critical infrastructure protection would be a really tough task to manage for the Indian Government, e project also lacks the concept of proper E-waste management.

Related initiatives
The DI initiative must be read along with the Draft Internet of Things (loT) Policy of India.[20] However, the problems, the challenges and the deficiencies in the Indian legal structure remain the same.

Civil Liberties Issues  ::  Initiatives like DI and lo T would be required to comply with the Civil liberties requirements in general and civil liberties protection in cyberspace in particular India has not given any importance to privacy and privacy laws so far. Indian government indulges into Mass surveillance in India and projects like Aadhaar, Central Monitoring System, Netra, NATGRID, etc. are operating without any law and parliamentary oversight. The intelligence agencies of India like Intelligence Bureau and law enforcement agencies like Central Bureau of Investigation are operating for decades without any law and parliamentary scrutiny DI and loT would further strengthen the mass surveillance activities of the Indian Government if proper procedural safeguards are not implemented and practiced.

Status of Digital India
Digital India is in the progress mode till the month of November 2015. The Apex Committee is going to analyse its progress very soon. Media reports have also hinted at development of policies for Digital India very soon. If correctly implemented, Digital India project can change the way public services would be delivered in India in the near future.

As the part of "Digital India" Indian government planned to launch Botnet cleaning centers. Government also launched a digital locker under the name "Digi Locker" . Modi appointed Kruti Tiwari as brand ambassador for Digit
India.

Digital India Week
At the launch ceremony of Digital India Week by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, top CEOs from India and abroad committed to invest Rs 4.5 lakh crore towards this initiative. The CEOs said the investments would be utilitized towards making smartphones and internet devices at an affordable price in India which would help generate jobs in India as well as reduce the cost of importing them from abroad. 9 Key points of Digital India Programme are as follow

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani said his company would invest Rs 2.5 lakh crore across different Digital India heads, which have the potential to create employment for over five lakh people. He also announced setting up of the Jio Digital India Start Up Fund' to encourage young entrepreneurs who are setting up businesses focused around the Digital India initiative.

Digital India Online Quiz Participation  :: 
All India states of students studying Class 6th to 12th can participate online quiz organized by National e-Governance Division (NeGD)with support from Intel Presently online quiz program is Digital Wellness Online Challenge (DWoc)will be organized from 1st July, 2015 to 17th, July 2015. After complete of this program new one will start like more quiz programmes. For participating register here. Fill students online registration form and start quiz.

Early Harvest Programmes
Early Harvest Programme basically consists of those projects which are to be implemented within short timeline. The projects under the Early Harvest Programme are as follows:

IT Platform for Messages: A mass messaging application has been developed by DeitY that will cover elected representatives and all Government employees Over 1.36 crore mobiles and 22 lakh emails are part of the database. The portal was released on 15th August 2014. Data collection and data sanitization are ongoing processes. Government Greetings to be e-Greetings Government Greetings to be e-Greetings: A basket of e-Greeting templates have been made available. Crowd sourcing of e-Greetings through the MyGov platform has been ensured. Crowd sourcing has also been used to create designs for Independence Day, Teachers' Day and Gandhi Jayanti greetings. E-Greetings portal has  made live on 14th August 2014.

Biometric Attendance: It will cover all Central Government offices in Delhi to begin with. over 40,000 Government employees from 150 organisations have already registered on the common Bio-metric attendance portal at http://attendance.gov.in. (link is external) Over 1000 bio-metric attendance terminals are under installation at entry gates of various Central Government buildings which will be connected with Wi-Fi Access points and mobile connectivity. Government employees will be able to mark their attendance from any of the central Government offices in Delhi.

Wi-Fi Universities: All universities on the National Knowledge Network (NKN) hall be covered under this scheme. Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) is the nodal ministry for implementing this scheme. Secure Email within Government

Secure Email within Government: Email would be the primary mode of communication within government. The government e-mail infrastructure would be suitably enhanced and upgraded. Upgradation of the infrastructure under Phase-I for 10 lakh employees has already been completed. Under Phase-II, infrastructure would be further upgraded to cover 50 lakh employees by March 2015 at
a cost of Rs.98 Cr. DeitY is the nodal department for this scheme.