DigiLocker is slowly but gradually changing India into a digitally enabled society
DigiLocker along with the issuance of documents also allows residents to upload their own electronic documents. The Digital India Programme’s key vision areas are to “offer shareable private space on a public cloud” and to “digitise all citizens’ documents and data and make them available in real-time.” This means that “giving citizens simple access to a shared private space on a public cloud can substantially aid process reengineering via paperless procedures.” Government documents can be issued in verifiable electronic format and stored in federated e-Document repositories; people can digitally save their documents, certifications, and so on and share them with public agencies or others without having to physically submit them.
This method of ‘e-Document repositories’ and ‘DigiLocker’ would substantially increase citizen convenience and usher in paperless transactions throughout the whole public services ecosystem. All of this must be done in conjunction with proper user authentication, audits, and other security best practises. This simple access to digital resources guarantees that individuals are not required to submit government documents or certifications that are already available in physical form with any government department/institution.
The citizen should not be required to present certified copies of his/her educational credentials when filling out an application form, but rather give details of these certificates that the concerned agency may view using the resource identifier provided by the person. Alternatively, departments that wishes to verify any of the issued citizen documents or certificates can become DigiLocker requestors, allowing them to access and verify the documents of citizen in real-time as well as in machine readable format from the single source of truth, which is the issuing agency or organisation. This is only the start of a new era of faceless and contactless service delivery. DigiLocker is constantly improving with the goal of enabling faster delivery of government services. It is being used in novel ways to make citizens’ lives easier.