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A.S.R.P. Mukesh
Ranchi, July 25: Jharkhand ranks a surprise fourth among states in opening digital lockers on public cloud, breathing down Bengal's neck and looking to overtake it to storm into the top three.
Till this evening, Jharkhand clocked 77,126 digital lockers or cyberspace storage for documents, 624 short of Bengal, the current national third. With 93,793 lockers, Maharashtra is on top, followed by Uttar Pradesh at 83,236.
A key part of Digital India initiative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi starting on July 1, the free government scheme of private space on public cloud has attracted enthusiasm in this tribal state where internet penetration is lower than say, Gujarat or Kerala.
Everyday, more and more people are opening cyberspace vaults for safe-keeping of their documents - birth, caste and education certificates, PAN, voter ID, property, job papers, driving licence and others.
If all goes well, state IT department mandarins are hoping that by next week, the tribal state will take over Bengal.
To achieve this, the department is planning to hold vigorous special camps at government and private establishments across the state and in schools of the capital.
State IT director U.P. Sah told The Telegraph they sent letters to around 29 big public and private establishments in Jharkhand, including companies, banks and NGOs, as well as all state-run and private schools of Ranchi, on special digital locker camps.
"We have deputed officials to follow up with organisations and schools. By Monday, we should be in a position to chart out rosters for camps," Sah said.
"Basically, it's as easy as opening an email account. Anyone with an Aadhaar number can create an e-locker," he added.
"It will take us time to get close to Uttar Pradesh or Maharashtra but as far as Bengal is concerned, contest is neck to neck. A week ago, we were sixth or seven position, but now we have zoomed to fourth," said Sah, also the nodal officer for the state's digital locker project.
On best-performing districts in terms of e-lockers, Sah said getting exact break-up was difficult it was handled centrally. "But, locally we have asked our representatives in all districts to compile figures for a review," he added.
"If we look at e-lockers created through district Pragya Kendras till July 20, Bokaro tops the state with 7,312 lockers, followed by Pakur and Sahebganj with 5,200 each, Godda and Dumka with 2,500 each. Hazaribagh is in the fag end, below 100. Ranchi, Jamshedpur figures are yet to come but figures aren't much."
"I personally believe cities like Jamshedpur, Ranchi have big numbers as Net savvy people would have created their e-lockers individually and not through a Pragya Kendra. A review meeting is scheduled on Monday after which a clearer district segmentation is expected," he added.
A cloud in tech jargon is a network of servers on the Internet rather than on the local server of individuals or organisations, thereby allowing larger space to store data and higher speeds to manage and process it while keeping the system cost-effective.
Each Aadhaar-linked digital locker, which is hosted on such a cloud by the Indian government, comes with 1GB of free memory space. The locker has five segments: "My Certificates", "My Profile", "My Issuer", "My Requester" and "Directories".
When vital documents are stored on e-locker, it helps minimise the use of physical documents. Citizens can access their documents through web portal and mobile application anywhere and anytime. Also, the worry of losing physical documents is eliminated.
But, at the same time, the user will be held responsible for the authenticity of all electronic documents he or she stores.
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