What is a ‘Digital Locker’ /”DIGI Locker”?
‘Digital Locker’ / “ DIGI Locker” is one of the key initiatives under the ‘Digital India’ Programme of the Union Government of India of PM Narendra Modi, formed in February 2015 and launched in July 2015.
‘Digital Locker’ is a virtual online ‘Safety Locker’, similar to a ‘Safety Locker’ in a Bank, which can be used by the Indian ‘Residents’ using the ‘Aadhar Number’, issued by the ‘Unique Identity Authority of India’ /UIDAI.
It is an external website that opens in a new window, in which the ‘Registered Users’ can store their ‘E-Documents’ with their ‘E-Signatures’, in a ‘secure dedicated and personal’ electronic space of Maximum 1 GB.
The Following are the ‘Objectives’ of the ‘Digital Locker System’:
To enable ‘Digital Empowerment of Residents of India’, by providing them with ‘Digital Locker’ on the Cloud,
To enable ‘E-Signing’ of the documents and make them available electronically and online,
To minimize the use of Physical Documents /Hard Paper Copies,
To ensure authenticity of the e-documents and thereby,
To eliminate usage of fake documents,
To reduce the administrative overhead of the Government Departments and Agencies and
To make it easy for the residents to receive services,
To provide “Anytime, Anywhere Access” /’AAA’ to the documents by the residents,
To open an inter operable standards based architecture to support a well-structured standard document format,
To secure access to Government issued documents through a ‘Web Portal’ and ‘Mobile Applications’ for the residents of India,
‘Digital Locker Repository’ is a Collection of e-Documents which are uploaded by issuers in a standard format and exposing a set of standard APIs for secure real-time search and access.
‘Access Gateway’ provides a secure online mechanism for requesters to access e-documents from various repositories in real-time using e-Document, ‘Uniform Resource Indicator’/ ‘URI’.
The gateway will identify the address of the repository where the e-Document is stored based on the Uniform Resource Indicator / URI and will fetch the e-Document from that repository.