Programmes & Policies Related to ICT | Science & Technology for UPSC CSE PDF Download

Digital India Initiative

• Department of Electronics and Information Technology (Deity) is an umbrella organization that cooperates and coordinates the implementation of this programme.
• It aims at converting India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.
• All the digital initiatives that are undergoing like National Broadband Plan and domestic manufacturing policy are integrated and brought under this initiative.

The vision of digital India is:

• Infrastructure development that would enable each and every citizen to utilize it to the fullest.
  • Some of these infrastructures include high-speed internet facilities, digital identity, mobile, and phone banking, safe and secure cyberspace.
• Governance and online services so that citizens can use it to avail services that remain away from their reach
  • Some of the facilities include a digital support system, services available in real-time, services that can enable ease of doing a business, electronic and cashless financial transactions.
• Digital Empowerment of citizen
  • Only digital literacy can harness the benefits of digitization.
  • Some of the steps would be universal accessibility of digital resources, regional compatibility of digital resources.

Digital India programme stands on nine pillars. They are:

• Broadband Highways
• Universal access to phone
• Public internet access programme
• E-Governance
• E-Kranti-electronic delivery of services
• Information for all
• Electronic manufacturing
• IT for jobs
• Early harvest programme

Mystic Project
It is a secret surveillance project of National Surveillance Agency of the USA, to record 100% of foreign country’s telephone calls. These calls are stored in a database code-named NUCLEON and can be retrieved at a later date using a code-named RETRO. Former NSA contractor and whistle-blower of USA’s surveillance program Edward Snowden have revealed this.

Bharat Net Project
Bharat Net Project is the new brand name of National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) which was launched in October 2011 to provide broadband connectivity to all 2.5 Lakh Gram Panchayats. It was renamed Bharatnet in 2015. The primary objective was to extend the existing optical fibre network up to the Panchayat level. The government had planned to make this network available to telecom service provides and as a highway for transmission of voice, data, and video in rural areas.
Bharat Broadband Network Limited is a Special Purpose Vehicle set up under Companies Act by
Government of India with an authorized capital of Rs. 1000 Cr. It has been mandated to create the National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN) in India.
A total of around 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats spread over 6,600 Blocks and 641 Districts are to be covered by laying incremental fiber. The timeline for this ambitious project is two years.
Bharat Net is being funded through Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF). The Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) was established with the fundamental objective of providing access to ‘Basic’ telegraph services to people in the rural and remote areas at affordable and reasonable prices. Subsequently, the scope was widened to provide subsidy support for enabling access to all types of telegraph services including mobile services, broadband connectivity, and the creation of infrastructure like OFC in rural and remote areas.
A similar amount of investment is likely to be made by the private sector complementing the NOFN infrastructure while providing services to individual users.

• Will extend Broadband facility to all 2.5L Panchayats.
• Utilize UFOS (Universal Services Obligation Fund)
• Will offer 100 Mbps services.
• BSNL, PGCIL, and Railtel will be executing the project on behalf of BBNL.

Critical Evaluation:

• India does not have capacity to produce the required fibre annually. Delay in project.
• 100 Mbps may be too much for rural uses.
• Services to be offered by Private Operators but they may not jump in immediately.
• Laying out of fibre is a big challenge in rural areas
• It is just about the laying of optic fibres. For end-to-end services, service providers will have to set up their own infrastructure at the gram panchayat level. While the initial cost was projected at Rs 20,000 crore for the NOFN project, private companies will need to pump in much more than this amount to offer services to end customers. This may not be a commercially viable proposition, considering the fact that these would be low revenue markets
• Supply of fibre cable is an issue according to annual procurement. It would take more years than projected to have optic fibre for stipulated project

Importance

• As per a study conducted by the World Bank, with every 10 percent increase in broadband penetration, there is a 1.4 percent increase in GDP growth
• NOFN will also facilitate the implementation of various e-governance initiatives such as e-health, e-banking, and e-education, thereby facilitating inclusive growth.

Education

• Remote classrooms in rural government schools: Online vocational training courses delivered through rural ICT centers such as the Common Service Centers

Healthcare

• Telemedicine centers for remote consultation and diagnostics, set up by private healthcare service providers or by rural entrepreneurs in collaboration with private healthcare service providers

Banking

• Basic banking services to the unbanked population using, among others, the Post Office network
• Doorstep banking services from various commercial banks through the Business Correspondent network maintained by a third-party private provider

Agriculture

• Internet kiosks for providing agriculture-related information to farmers
• Integrated application platform that pushes agricultural information over SMS and can also be accessed.

Entertainment

• The various entertainment apps in the mobile phone can be used for the entertainment. For example, Hot Star, Voot etc.

Bridging the Digital Divide

• The various Digital Literacy programs of the centre and state can be implemented successfully through BharatNet.
• This reduces the digital divide between rural and urban population.

Tarang Sanchar Portal
The Tarang Sanchar Portal has been developed in Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. Department of Telecommunications initiative with Industry.
This Portal envisages disseminating the information to the public regarding Electro Magnetic Fields (EMF) signals and to allay the misconceptions and fear of health issues due to EMF emissions from mobile towers. The public, at large will be now able to check the current status of the mobile tower located anywhere in the country and the EMF signal compliance status of the same.
This Portal also enables the public to go through the latest developments and corresponding information available in respect of EMF emissions from mobile towers and to submit their feedback and comments on the same.

Crime And Criminal Tracking Network System (Cctns)

• CCTNS is a Mission Mode Project under the National e-Governance Plan of Govt. of India, MHA started in 2009.
• CCTNS aims at creating a comprehensive and integrated system for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of policing through adopting a principle of e-Governance and the creation of nationwide networking infrastructure for the evolution of IT-enabled-state-of-the-art tracking system.
• The goals of the system are to facilitate the collection, storage, retrieval, analysis, transfer, and sharing of data and information at the police station and between the police station and the State Headquarters and the Central Police Organizations.
• It will help in online tracking cases and arresting criminals and speedy investigating any case.

National Policy On Information Technology (Npit)

• Information technology plays an important role in the development of any sector and as a whole economy.
• India aspires to become a knowledge economy by developing its IT and Information Technology Enabled Service (ITES).
• NPIT vision is to develop India into IT hub and use IT cyberspace as a source for inclusive and rapid growth in national economy.

Objective of NPIT

• Increase revenue of IT and ITES.
• Acquire global market share in emerging IT technologies and services
• Promote innovation and R&D in cutting edge technologies.
• Adopt strategies to improve competitiveness and productivity.
• Aid SMEs to adopt IT technologies,
• To make at least one individual in every household e-literate.
• Provide all public services in electronic mode.
• Utilize ITC in social sectors like Education, health, rural development and financial services.
• Capacity building by developing Human resource.
• These goals can be achieved by following a systematic strategy. There is need to create an environment of IT/ITES competitiveness so as to enhance productivity
• Human resource development through skill development and expertise creation can prove to be good.
• R&D, internet and mobile driven services, GIS based IT services and security of cyber space can be other strategies.

Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In)

• It’s a government organization under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology
• It deals with cybersecurity and serves as the national agency to perform certain functions.
• It intends to perform these duties:
  • Identify cyber incidents and issue information regarding it
  • Raise alerts for cybersecurity incidents.
  • Emergency measures for handling cybersecurity incidents
  • Coordination of cyber incident response activities
  • Issue guidelines, advisories, vulnerability notes, and whitepapers relating to information security practices, procedures, prevention, response, and reporting of cyber incidents.
• It reports the incidence on daily basis and alerts computer system users about the vulnerability of the system. Recently it reported multiple vulnerabilities in Apple iOS.
• In 2014 CERT-in reported a new Virus and malware named Hikiti Malware, Dyreza Trojan, and ShellShock Malware.

Computer Emergency Response Team in Financial Sector (Cert-Fin)

Cert-Fin will be an umbrella Cert for the financial sector and report to Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) at the national level, in accordance with the information technology Act and rules.

Features of Cert-Fin
Cert-Fin will work closely with all financial-sector regulators and stakeholders on issues of cyber security.

• Cert-Fin will be an independent body, to be set up as a company under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013, with a governing board.
• It will have an advisory board for providing direction, reviewing performance and recommendations, and allocation of resources.
• It has also been recommended that each financial-sector regulator will have a separate entity that will provide information in real-time to Cert-Fin.
• There would be a bank-Cert (which would be the Reserve Bank of India), a securities-cert, insurance-cert, and pension-cert; all of which will directly report to Cert-Fin.
• Cert-Fin will then report to the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), which monitors, and coordinates protected systems of critical national infrastructure.

Importance of CERT-Fin

• Cert-Fin will collect, analyze and disseminate information on cyber incidents across financial sectors. It will forecast and send alerts on cybersecurity incidents. It will also take emergency measures on cybersecurity incidents.
• It will coordinate responses and activities for cyber incidents and issue guidelines, advisories, and white papers relating to vulnerabilities and information security.
• It will monitor efforts in the financial sector towards maintaining modern cybersecurity architecture, developing awareness among regulated entities and the public in general.
• Cert-Fin will also create awareness on security issues through the dissemination of information on its website and operate a 24×7 incidence response help desk.
• It will also provide incident prevention and response services as well as quality management services and will carry out functions similar to Cert-In, which operates at the national level, for priority cybersecurity in the financial sector.
• Cert-Fin will offer policy suggestions for strengthening financial sector cybersecurity to all the stakeholders, including regulators and the government.

How it impacts you?

• Since the country is on a digital drive, it becomes even more important to protect the users from any cyber incidents. Therefore, a national body to monitor cybersecurity in the financial services sector is a good idea.
• However, we will have to see how much time it takes for the government to implement this idea and also how well it will be executed.

The Information Technology Act, 2000
The Information Technology Act, 2000 (also known as ITA-2000, or the IT Act) is an Act of the Indian
Parliament (No 21 of 2000) notified on 17 October 2000.

• It is the primary law in India dealing with cybercrime and electronic commerce. It is based on the United Nations Model Law on Electronic Commerce 1996 (UNCITRAL Model) recommended by the General Assembly of United Nations by a resolution dated 30 January 1997.
• The original Act contained 94 sections, divided in 13 chapters and 4 schedules. The laws apply to the whole of India.
• Persons of other nationalities can also be indicted under the law if the crime involves a computer or network located in India.
• The Act provides the legal framework for electronic governance by giving recognition to electronic records and digital signatures.
• The formation of Controller of Certifying Authorities was directed by the Act, to regulate issuing of digital signatures.
• It also defines cybercrimes and prescribed penalties for them. It also established a Cyber Appellate Tribunal to resolve disputes arising from this new law.

The Act also amended various sections of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, Indian Evidence Act, 1872, Banker’s Book Evidence Act, 1891, and Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 to make them compliant with new technologies.
In the pursuance of section 70-B of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (the “IT Act”), Central Government issued the Information Technology (The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team and Manner of Performing Functions and Duties) Rules, 2013, these CERT Rules also impose an obligation on service providers, intermediaries, data centres and body corporates to report cyber incidents within a reasonable time so that CERT-In may have scope for timely action.
Section 69 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, empowers the central government or a state government to intercept, monitor or decrypt or cause to be intercepted or monitored or decrypted, any information generated, transmitted, received, or stored in any computer resource in the interest of the sovereignty or integrity of India.

Cyber Surakshit Bharat
Recognizing the need to strengthen the cybersecurity ecosystem in India, and in alignment with the Honourable Prime Minister’s vision for a ‘Digital India’, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), announced the Cyber Surakshit Bharat initiative in association with National eGovernance Division (NeGD) and industry partners at an inaugural event in Delhi.
Conceptualized with the mission to spread awareness about cybercrime and building capacity for safety measures for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and frontline IT staff across all government departments, Cyber Surakshit Bharat will be operated on the three principles of Awareness, Education and Enablement.

It will include an awareness program on the importance of cybersecurity; a series of workshops on best practices and enablement of the officials with cybersecurity health tool kits to manage and mitigate cyber threats.
Cyber Surakshit Bharat is the first public-private partnership of its kind and will leverage the expertise of the IT industry in cybersecurity. The founding partners of the consortium are leading IT companies Microsoft, Intel, WIPRO, Redhat, and Dimension Data.
Additionally, knowledge partners include Cert-In, NIC, NASSCOM, and the FIDO Alliance, and premier consultancy firms Deloitte and EY.

Digilocker
Digi Locker is a “digital locker” service operated by the Government of India that enables Indian citizens to store certain official documents on the cloud. The service is aimed towards reducing the need to carry physical documents and is part of the government’s Digital India initiative.
1 GB of storage space is offered to users to store identification card issued by government agencies, education certificates, PAN cards, driving licenses, vehicle ownership documents and some other documents.
There is also an associated facility for e-signing documents. The service is intended to minimize the use of physical documents, reduce administrative expenses, provide authenticity of the e-documents, provide secure access to government-issued documents, and to make it easy for the residents to receive services.

India’s Supercomputer
India’s two fastest supercomputers built for weather forecasting, Pratyush and Mihir, have broken into the top 100 list globally in 2018. Pratyush and Mihir are the supercomputers established at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, and National Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (NCMRWF), Noida respectively.

• They are located at two government institutes, one being 4.0 PetaFlops unit at IITM, Pune, and another 2.8 PetaFlops unit at the National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), Noida. Both units and provides a combined output of 6.8 PetaFlops.

The Summit supercomputer is the fastest supercomputer in the world.
Param Shavak – Supercomputing Solution In A Box
Param Shavak machine (PARAM Shavak – solution), aims to provide a computational resource (Capacity building) with advanced technologies to perform high-end computations for scientific, engineering, and academic programs to address and catalyze the research using modelling, simulation, and data analysis.
This initiative is expected to create HPC(High Performance Computing) aware skilled workforce (Capability building) and for promoting research by integrating leading-edge emerging technologies at the grass-roots level.
As the scope and complexity of computational needs continue to increase at colleges universities, professors and administrators are compelled to seek appropriate and affordable solutions.
PARAM Shavak provides the computing power necessary to keep academic institutions on the leading edge in today’s competitive market at an affordable cost.
This system is meant for research organizations and academic institutions that are on the verge of adopting HPC culture in their institutions/organizations.
Besides a handful of value additions from C-DAC, the system comes with most of the features that can be found in a full-blown HPC clusters job schedulers, compilers, parallel libraries, mpi, resource managers, some of the commonly used HPC applications in engineering scientific domains, etc.

National Supercomputing Mission
The Mission envisages empowering our national academic and R&D institutions spread over the country by installing a vast supercomputing grid comprising of more than 70 high-performance computing facilities. These supercomputers will also be networked on the National Supercomputing grid over the National Knowledge Network (NKN).
The Mission would be implemented and steered jointly by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) at an estimated cost of Rs.4500 crore over a period of seven years.

• To make India one of the world leaders in Supercomputing and to enhance India’s capability in solving grand challenge problems of national and global relevance
• To empower our scientists and researchers with state-of-the-art supercomputing facilities and enable them to carry out cutting-edge research in their respective domains
• To minimize redundancies and duplication of efforts, and optimize investments in supercomputing
• To attain global competitiveness and ensure self-reliance in the strategic area of supercomputing technology

Application areas:

• Climate Modelling
• Weather Prediction
• Aerospace Engineering including CFD, CSM, CEM
• Computational Biology
• Molecular Dynamics
• Atomic Energy Simulations
• National Security/ Defence Applications
• Seismic Analysis
• Disaster Simulations and Management
• Computational Chemistry
• Computational Material Science and Nanomaterials
• Discoveries beyond Earth (Astrophysics)
• Large Complex Systems Simulations and Cyber Physical Systems
• Big Data Analytics
• Finance
• Information repositories/ Government Information Systems

National Knowledge Network (Nkn)
National Knowledge Network (NKN) project is aimed at establishing a strong and robust Indian network that will be capable of providing secure and reliable connectivity.
In India, NKN with its multi-gigabit capability aims to connect all universities, research institutions, libraries, laboratories, healthcare, and agricultural institutions across the country to address such paradigm shift.
The leading mission-oriented agencies in the fields of nuclear, space, and defense research are also part of NKN. By facilitating the flow of information and knowledge, the network addresses the critical issue of access and creates a new paradigm of collaboration to enrich the research efforts in the country.
The network design is based on a proactive approach that takes into account the future requirements and new possibilities that this infrastructure may unfold, both in terms of usage and perceived benefits. This will bring about a knowledge revolution that will be instrumental in transforming society and promoting inclusive growth.

Role of NKN:

• Establishing a high-speed backbone connectivity which will enable knowledge and information sharing amongst NKN connected institutes
• Enabling collaborative research, development and innovation amongst NKN connected institutes
• Facilitating advanced distance education in specialized fields like engineering, science, medicine etc.
• Facilitating an ultra-high-speed e-governance backbone
• Facilitating connection between different sectoral networks in the field of research.

Goal
In March 2010, the Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure (CCI) approved the establishment of the National Knowledge Network (NKN) at an outlay of Rs 5990 Crore, to be implemented by NIC over a period of 10 years. Establishing NKN is a significant step towards ushering in a knowledge revolution in the country with connectivity to 1500+ institutions. NKN is intended to connect all the knowledge and research institutions in the country using high bandwidth / low latency network.
NKN has been established keeping the following features in mind:

• Establishing a high-speed backbone connectivity which will enable knowledge and information sharing Enabling collaborative research, development and Innovation
• Facilitating advanced distance education in specialized fields such as engineering, science, medicine etc.
• Facilitating an ultra-high-speed backbone for e-Governance
• Facilitating integration of different sectoral networks in the field of research, education, health, commerce and governance.
• Link to Global Networks to collaborate with the research communities across the globe.

National Telecom Policy-2012
GoI had launched NPT-2012 in the backdrop of the 2-G scam. This policy aims to provide a Unified Licensing Regime with the approval of the Ministry of IT and Communication. The policy aims to provide secure, reliable, affordable, and high-quality coverage of communication services. This is done for the overall socio-economic development of society.

It proposes

• Increased rural teledensity from present 37% to 70% by the year 2017 and 100% by 2020.
• Broadband for all at a minimum speed of 2mbps
• To make India a ‘Domestic Manufacturing Hub in IT’.
• The convergence of network, services, and devices
• Liberalization of Spectrum
• Simplification of Licensing Regime- In the wake of the recent row over 2 G scam
• Free-roaming and full mobile portability
• Voice over Internet Protocol
• Cloud Computing and IPV6

Cloud Computing And Meghraj Initiative

What is Cloud Computing?

• Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
• Cloud computing in simple terms can be defined as storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer’s hard drive. It doesn’t just end there. Cloud in the term of Cloud Computing refers to a set of hardware, networks, storage, services, and interfaces that combine to deliver aspects of computing as a service.
• So, it is not just that you are going to share information but in cloud computing, even the infrastructure can be shared on a real-time basis on the internet.

MeghRaj

• Meghraj is the name given to the initiative of the Government of India for its new program which is going to take advantage of the Cloud Computing. Meghraj is just a name coined for the purpose (Megh=Cloud, Raj=Rule i.e. Rule of Cloud Computing). As much absurd as the name seems, but the advantages the Indians will get from this technology are immense. Another name for Meghraj is the GI Cloud Initiative.
• It will enable the government to leverage cloud computing for the effective delivery of e-services.

What are the components of Governments Cloud Computing?

• Five essential characteristics (viz. on-demand self-service, ubiquitous network access, metered use, elasticity and resource pooling)
• Three service models (infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service)
• Four deployment models (public cloud, private cloud, community cloud and hybrid cloud)
• The Cloud Computing initiative envision to accelerate delivery of e-services provided by the government and to optimize ICT spending of the government.

Advantages of GI Cloud

• Optimum utilization of existing infrastructure
• Rapid deployment and reusability: Any software made available by any government of department in India can be made available to other departments as well without additional costs.
• Manageability and maintainability: It provide single point for maintaining Information & Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure in India.
• Scalability: According to the demands from the citizens of India, infrastructure of the government can be increased accordingly.
• Efficient service delivery
• Security: A security framework for the entire GI Cloud will lead to less environmental complexity and less potential vulnerability.
• Increased user mobility
• Reduced effort in managing technology
• Ease of first time IT solution deployment
• Cost reduction
• Standardization: GI Cloud shall prescribe the standards around interoperability, integration, security, data security and portability etc.

Uses of Meghraj

• The GI Cloud will provide services to government departments, citizens and businesses through internet as well as mobile connectivity.
• In addition to accelerating the delivery of e-services to citizens and businesses, the government’s cloud-based service delivery platform will also support a number of other objectives including increased standardization, interoperability and integration, etc.

Main issues of the GI Cloud Initiative

• lack of common policies among states & center will challenge application reuse
• Individual technology stacks and a lack of infrastructure standardization will limit success.
• The lack of a clear mandate or incentives will affect g-cloud uptake.

Community Radio

• Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting.
• Community stations serve geographic communities and communities of interest. They broadcast content that is popular and relevant to a local, specific audience but is often overlooked by commercial or mass-media broadcasters.
• Community radio stations are operated, owned, and influenced by the communities they serve.
• They are generally non-profit and provide a mechanism for enabling individuals, groups, and communities to tell their own stories, to share experiences, and, in a media-rich world, to become creators and contributors of media.
• In India, the campaign to legitimize community radio began in the mid-1990s, soon after the Supreme Court of India ruled in its judgment of February 1995 that “airwaves are public property”.
• The judgment inspired several free speech advocates, academics, and community members across the country to being a concerted campaign to legitimize community radio in India.
• In December 2002, the Government of India approved a policy for the grant of licenses for setting up of Community Radio Stations to well established educational institutions including IITs/IIMs.
• The matter has been reconsidered and the Government has now decided to broad base the policy by bringing ‘Non-profit’ organizations like civil society and voluntary organizations etc under its ambit in order to allow greater participation by the civil society on issues relating to development & social change.

Global Centre For Cybersecurity

The centre will focus on the following aims:

• Consolidating existing cybersecurity initiatives of the World Economic Forum
• Establishing an independent library of cyber best practices
• Helping partners to enhance knowledge on cybersecurity
• Working towards an appropriate and agile regulatory framework on cybersecurity
• Serving as a laboratory and early-warning think tank for future cybersecurity scenarios

Budapest Convention
The Convention on Cybercrime, also known as the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime or the Budapest Convention, is the first international treaty seeking to address Internet and computer crime by harmonizing national laws, improving investigative techniques, and increasing cooperation among nations.

• It was drawn up by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, with the active participation of the Council of Europe’s observer states Canada, Japan, Philippines, South Africa, and the United States.
• Since it entered into force, important countries like Brazil and India have declined to adopt the Convention on the grounds that they did not participate in its drafting.
• Russia opposes the Convention, stating that adoption would violate Russian sovereignty, and has usually refused to cooperate in law enforcement investigations relating to cybercrime.
• It is the first multilateral legally binding instrument to regulate cybercrime.
• Since 2018, India has been reconsidering its stand on the Convention after a surge in cybercrime, though concerns about sharing data with foreign agencies remain.

The Convention aims principally at:

• Harmonizing the domestic criminal substantive law elements of offenses and connected provisions in the area of cyber-crime.
• Providing for domestic criminal procedural law powers necessary for the investigation and prosecution of such offenses as well as other offenses committed by means of a computer system or evidence in relation to which is in electronic form.
• Setting up a fast and effective regime of international cooperation.