NEW DELHI: Electronics and Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said the National Informatics Centre is the “technological bridge of India and is best placed to lead the way for a Digital India”

He urged the District Information Officers (DIOs) to be innovative and proactive. NIC must adopt a transformative approach to make a difference at the grassroots level. He appealed to the NIC to connect with the Common Service Centres (CSCs), who have successfully provided training on digital payment systems to over 19.6 million of rural citizens and 6,15,000 merchants.”

He was speaking at an event where the NIC kicked off the National Meet on Grassroot Informatics – VIVID: Weaving a Digital India here.

The inauguration of the three-day event was also attended Minister of State P P Chaudhary, Secretary Ms Aruna Sundararajan, Additional Secretary Ajay Kumar, NIC DG Ms Neeta Verma, and Deputy DG Ms Rama Nagpal.

Prasad announced the Government’s plan to set up a Government Security Operation Centre and a Data Centre for Cloud in Bhopal. He also announced that the Government is going to enhance the infrastructure of district NIC offices to international standards. As a pilot project, 150 District NIC offices would be upgraded during the period 2017-18, while rest will follow soon.

He instructed the ministry to develop a training module for the NIC officials to keep pace with the ever evolving technologies. He also announced the introduction of annual awards for the DIOs of the NIC for taking up exemplary innovative approach in their respective districts. The top three best innovators will get a reward of Rs 2,00,000, Rs 1,00,000 and Rs 50,000 respectively.

Chaudhary said, “The threshold of the year 2017 will always be remembered for heralding in several transformative changes to benefit the economy as well to the citizens, amongst them the Digital India initiative has been the most significant one. I must congratulate NIC and DIOs for playing a pivotal role in preparing the country for a successful Digital transformation of our ecosystem.

NIC also introduced two new portals - District Collector’s Dashboard and NIC Service Desk, which were launched by Prasad and Chaudhary respectively.

The National Meet on Grassroots Informatics is aimed at showcasing the various initiatives of NIC in creating and enhancing the Digital Infrastructure in the country. Some of these are - setting up of ICT infrastructure, developing state of the art products to enable the government and empower the citizens, its initiatives at state and district level along the lines of Digital India initiatives along with the various awareness campaigns on Digital Payment Systems encompassing DBT, PFMS, Cashless Payment, Aadhaar etc.

The individual sessions during these three days would throw lights on NIC’s journey so far, the best practices it follows, the Digital India programme, Digital India initiatives from NIC State Units, success stories from the districts, Financial Inclusion, its technology awareness programmes and ICT Infrastructure being provided by NIC.