NEW DELHI: Observing that the digital age is going to dominate the future, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has said the Digital India Programme is a giant leap in the endeavour to create a digitally empowered and knowledge-based society.

Inaugurating an Orientation Programme on ‘Digital India Implementation’ for Members of Parliament in Parliament Library Building yesterday, she emphasized that many may not be well acquainted with Digital India as it was a relatively new phenomenon but it was imperative that Members as people’s representatives gain the right knowledge through this familiarization programme for the benefit of people at large.

Mahajan further observed that Digital India campaign launched in July 2015 seeks to ensure that the Government services are made available to people effectively by improving online infrastructure, by increasing internet connectivity and by making the country digitally empowered in the field of technology.

She hoped that the domain experts in the field would focus on the key components of Digital India Framework, MyGov - Creating Participatory Digital Democracy and Digital Village – connecting Rural India to Digital Services for the Members.

Mahajan stressed that our Parliament is taking pro-active measures in adopting and applying information technology in its functioning. She said that an e-Portal for Lok Sabha Members was launched on 17 July 2016 to help the Members to discharge their parliamentary works more efficiently. It will be instrumental in minimizing the use of paper and help to convert Lok Sabha into a paperless institution in future, she added.

Electronics & Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad; Minister of State of P P Chaudhary; Bureau of Parliamentary Studies and Training (BPST) Honorary Advisor Raghunandan Sharma and Lok Sabha Secretary-General Anoop Mishra were also present at the inaugural function. The Programme was organized by BPST, Lok Sabha Secretariat in collaboration with the National Institute for Smart Government.