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As part of its Digital India project, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) of the Indian government offers the online service known as DigiLocker. Every Aadhaar user is given a cloud account by DigiLocker so they may obtain legitimate papers and certifications from the original issuers of these credentials, such as driving licences, vehicle registration records, and academic mark sheets. Each account has access to 1GB of storage space, which can be used to upload scanned copies of old documents.
Aadhaar number is required for users to utilize DigiLocker. The Aadhaar number and the one-time password issued to the cellphone number registered with Aadhaar must be entered in order to sign up.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced the service’s beta version in February 2015[4], and it officially debuted on July 1, 2015. The service initially offered 100 MB of storage space, which was later increased to 1 GB. Each file that is uploaded must be larger than 10 MB.
DigiLocker reported 2.013 million users and 2.413 million documents in July 2016. In April, when the government ordered all municipal entities to use DigiLocker to eliminate paper from their administration, the number of users increased significantly by 753,000.
Digital Locker: Overview
One of the primary initiatives in the Digital India agenda is Digital Locker. It intends to do away with the need for paper and makes it possible for agencies to share verified electronic records. Citizens can get a dedicated 1GB of cloud storage with Digital Locker. It will allow various entities with Digital Locker accounts to electronically push citizenship certificates to citizens’ Digital Lockers. The scanned versions of legacy documents that citizens can upload and safely store in Digital Locker.
The eSign feature can be used to digitally sign these older documents. When requesting services from various departments and agencies listed on Digital Locker, a citizen can share these electronic certificates with them online. Citizens, issuers, and requestors are thus brought together on one platform through Digital Locker. The two document types that DigiLocker accepts and distributes are PDF and XML. In contrast to the XML format, which is utilised as a machine-readable version of a document so that programmes may use it to make decisions based on specific data in the document, citizens receive PDF documents in their DigiLocker accounts. DigiLocker takes certificates from a wide range of issuers, so it’s important to standardise their formats so that consumers can easily utilise a single certificate type regardless of the issuer. The XML structure of the majority of certificates in DigiLocker is provided in this document.
About Digital Locker
Under the Digital India programme, the Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) has launched the flagship initiative DigiLocker. By giving citizens access to real digital papers in their digital document wallet, DigiLocker intends to “Digitally Empower” them. According to Rule 9A of the Information Technology (Preservation and Retention of Information by Intermediaries providing Digital Locker facilities) Rules, 2016 published on February 8, 2017 by G.S.R. 711, issued documents in the DigiLocker system are regarded as being on par with original physical documents.
Advantages for Citizens
- Important Documents can be viewed or shared by the citizens anytime and anywhere.
- Genuine Digital Documents are record in it which is equal in Legal Standing to Originals.
- Digital document exchange with citizen approval.
- Government benefits, employment, financial inclusion, education, and health services delivered more quickly.
Advantages for Agencies
- Lower Administrative Expenses: This goal is to achieve paperless government. By using less paper and reducing the verification process, it lowers administrative overhead.
- Provides trustworthy issued documents in the form of digital transformation. Issued Documents are retrieved in real-time from the issuing agency and made available through DigiLocker.
- Secure Document Gateway: With the approval of the citizen, it serves as a platform for the secure exchange of documents between trusted issuer and trusted Requester/Verifier.
- Real Time Verification: After receiving user agreement, this feature offers a verification module that enables government organisations to validate data directly from issuers.
Objectives of Digital Locker
- Enable resident digital empowerment by giving them access to a cloud-based digital locker.
- Make documents available online and electronically, and enable e-signatures for them. Reduce the consumption of paper documents.
- Ensure the e-documents’ authenticity to prevent the use of phoney documents.
- Residents have safe access to government documents via a web portal and mobile application.
- Reduce the administrative costs of government departments and agencies so that residents can access services more easily.
- The resident has access to the documents whenever and whenever they are
- A well-structured standard document format that facilitate simple document exchange between departments and agencies, supported by an open and interoperable standards-based architecture
- Assure residents’ data privacy and permitted access.
Digital Locker Ecosystem
DigiLocker is a dynamic ecosystem of citizens, requesters, and issuers; it is not just another programme for storing documents. Requesters can access citizens’ papers from personal lockers by using DigiLocker to share URIs(Uniform Resource Identifier) or self-uploaded documents with them. Documents are sent directly into citizens’ DigiLocker accounts by registered issuers. The inclusion of all significant government and non-government organisations and agencies is a requirement for the ecosystem’s survival.
Components of Digital Locker
- Dashboard: The first page you view after logging in contains a list of all of your documents.
- Issued Documents – This section lists the URIs (links) for any documents or certificates that the government department or other DigiLocker-affiliated organisations have issued to you.
- Papers Uploaded – This area displays all the documents that you have uploaded. These uploaded documents can be shared, the document type changed, and they can be eSigned.
- Documents You’ve Shared – This section displays a list of the documents you’ve shared with others (via email).
- Activity – This area serves as a record of your DigiLocker account’s actions. The log included activities including file upload, download, and eSign, among others.
- Departments and organisations that have registered as DigiLocker Issuers are listed in this section. Any documents or certificates that you have received from these departments will be listed in your Issued Documents section as a URI (link).
Better access to legitimate virtual documentation is provided by this DigiLocker. This incredible document wallet system allows you to hold all of your critical documents, including a driver’s licence, voter identification card, and Pan card. When you open a Digi locker account, it is even approved by the government to upload the papers and keep them secure for any further usage.
