In line with the vision of Digital India, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (GoI) has envisaged the Pilot of Digital Village with a view to showcase the transformation that Digital India Programme can bring about, to different stakeholders like Departments of Union Government, State Governments, Private Telecom Players, other corporate services providers and citizens especially living in the rural areas.

Digital Village pilot intends to provide a platform for availability of services such as tele-medicine, tele-education, LED street Lighting, Wi-Fi Hotspot and skill development to the people at the Gram Panchayat level in select blocks across various States and UTs. This project moves away from the traditional approach of e-Governance projects (that focused on creating infrastructure) and adopts a service based approach for pilot of the Digital Village.

The key sub components under Digital Village pilot Project are:
a. Tele Medicine services – which is realization of eKranti pillar of Digital India.
Under this service, a group of Primary Health Centers (PHCs) shall be parented to a lead hospital, which shall be a hospital of repute at block, district or state/UT level. Various consultation sessions pertaining to different fields of medicine shall be rendered under the Tele Medicine service.

b. Tele Education services – which is realization of eKranti pillar of Digital India.
Under this service, a group of rural schools shall be parented to a lead school. The lead school shall be a school of repute. The mode of delivery would be two way interactive sessions.

c. LED street Lighting and Wi-Fi Hotspot services – which is part of Digital Connectivity of Digital India.
There will be a high mast LED street lighting tower set up installed at common location in a Gram Panchayat. It would be used to provide free lighting at the common location. LED Street light will be operated from dawn to dusk.
As part of the initiative of digitally empowering the citizens, free access to internet would be provided for at least 5 hours per day.

d. Skill Development services – which is part of Digital empowerment of Digital India.
The VC and other infrastructure facilities available in resource centres shall be used for providing skill development training, holding information sharing sessions and organizing interactive sessions with experts, government officers etc.
Given this context, MeitY along with NISG has come out with draft Technical, Functional Specifications and Service levels (SLAs) for the digital village services.

The draft specifications are now put up for public consultation till 18th January, 2017. The inputs can be from any walk of life and may include citizens, teachers, doctors, technical experts, planners etc.

View Technical, Functional Specifications and SLAs of Tele education
View Technical, Functional Specifications and SLAs of LED street Lighting and WiFi hotspot
View Technical, Functional Specifications and SLAs of Tele medicine