APAC Exclusive : G20 Summit Highlights India’s Digital Prowess

Summarize with:

Rajneesh De, Consulting Editor, APAC News Network

The Digital India Experience Zone has been set up at the G20 Summit with the aim to provide hands-on experience to the delegates on the success of the Digital Transformation initiatives implemented in India at significant population scale.

Dissecting the Digital Experience Zone

Billed as a key attraction of the Summit, this Digital India journey will showcase the impact of Digital Public Infrastructure for ease of living of the entire polity. It will include all the flagship initiatives under the INDIA STACK including Aadhaar, Unified Payment Interface (UPI), DigiLocker, DIKSHA, Bhashini, ONDC, eSanjeevani among others.

The Digital India Experience Zone will be leveraging a host of new-gen technologies, including interactive displays, Virtual Reality with each installation crafted to resonate with the target audience (international delegates), ensuring meaningful engagement and age-appropriate content.

To some extent, the Digital India Experience Zone is a culmination of the he meetings of the G20 Digital Economy Working Group (DEWG) meetings conducted by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) throughout the year in Lucknow, Hyderabad, Pune and Bengaluru. The final outcome was the G20 Digital Economy Minister’s meeting in Bengaluru.

The G20 consensus on the deliverables presented by the Indian Presidency included Digital Public Infrastructure, One Future Alliance for financing DPIs in LMICs, global DPI repository, high-Level principles for supporting businesses, roadmap for facilitating cross country comparison of digital skills, toolkit for designing and introducing digital Up-skilling and re-skilling programs, and a virtual Centre of Excellence (CoE) fostering digitally-skilled talent, among others.

The icings on the cake came from the release of two knowledge products — ‘Accelerating the SDGs through DPI’ and ‘The DPI Playbook’by G20 Indian Presidency in partnership with UNDP. These products are aimed to assist countries in their digital transformation journey There were also MoUs signed with six countries on collaboration and sharing INDIA STACK, a portfolio of successful digital solutions implemented at a significant population scale.

What to See, How to See

The G20 delegates visiting the Digital India Experience Zone can get a live demonstration of the Aadhaar Face Authentication Software. The UPI exhibit will enable visitors to explore and discover the various applications of UPI worldwide. The delegates can even scan the QR codes to buy goodies and initiate seamless transactions with a nominal payment.

The visitors can learn about the practical utility of India’s DigiLocker, showcasing its role in streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency across sectors such as education, finance and banking, travel, transport, real estate, legal and judiciary.

The eSanjeevani exhibit will have doctors from various domains – Cardiology, Mental Health, Ophthalmologist, and General Medicine to provide online consultation and give visitors real-time health analysis and advice along with an e-prescription.

The DIKSHA exhibit will offer an immersive and intuitive experience, allowing visitors to explore the wealth of educational resources available on DIKSHA. At the Bhashini exhibit, the delegates can experience real-time speech-to-speech translation in all Indian languages as well as six UN languages. Facilitating further interaction, the ‘JugalBandi’ Telegram Bot will allow visitors ask questions and interact in any language of their choice.

The all-new GITA application is also expected to draw a large interest from the visiting delegates. The ‘Ask GITA’ application will provide a platform where visitors can seek answers to questions about life with regard to the revered holy book of Bhagvad Gita.

The G20 delegates can access all information related to the event through the G20 app, which was launched on Wednesday. This app has multilingual basic navigation capabilities and can support up to 5 UN languages and 5 other languages including English, Hindi, German, Japanese and Portuguese. The app also contains detailed information about workstreams of G20 and other engagement groups, virtual tours, navigation and latest social media feeds.