Does Digilocker act as a reliable bridge between the government and citizens?
-Sally Abraham
While Digilocker claims to be a document wallet to empower citizens, it also bridges a gap with students. This is from an educational perspective from my previous visit to Bangalore University to rectify a techical issue from Digilocker.
Digilocker acts as an E- Wallet to millions of citizens and aims to reduce nuisances caused during Physical administration which includes long queues, poor public infrastructure and administration mistakes. Digitalizing documents should reduce the hassle of paperwork, but in a country where digital literacy is 38% overall, this creates a gap between people who are familiar with electronics and those who are not.
Digilocker stores Aadhaar ID’s, Pan cards, Markscards etc. and as a student who has just completed her Bachelors of Arts, I was required to collect my markscard from Bangalore University, which by itself should have been an easy process. However due to poor management, due to which I had to enquire at the premises for 2 days. As well as poor infrastructure, limited seats but numerous students waiting in line, I found the system to be inconvienient.
But my aim wasn’t just to collect a physical copy of my markscard. I had to rectify a technical error with my documents caused by Digilocker.
After 2 days of visiting BU, I was guided to the digilocker office at the university. The techinical issue was not with uucms but the reflection from Digilocker itself which was a technical glitch. This glitch invalidated few of my documents, which required me to enquire in person, raising the same issues as long queues, poor management and now the uncertainity of whether or not this technical glitch can be fixed since the portal has been frozen and was inaccesible to the employees at BU.
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While Digilocker causes concerns over technical issues, it benefits as a storage cloud, where one can access important documents in one place which is convienient in comparison to carrying physical copies everywhere. Moreover since Digilocker was officially released during 2015, it was helpful during COVID-19.
However this still raises concerns over privacy, inconviences and technical issues. From my perspective, if all official documents are digitilized then who will take accountability for techinical nuiances?
As a solution, a mix of physical and digital administration should be available i.e it should not only be digital, which is already the case at Bangalore University.
To enhance and ease the process of technical issues for students a few steps can be taken:
- Create a better platform to handle grievances, a team that works for matters such as, Paper verification, technical issues, support system for inconveniences, valid numbers and emails which actually provide guidances.
- For issues which require your physical presence, create a setup where citizens have hope for help and comfort during waiting period. Such as, a row of seats and a number call so everyone knows they will recieve an oppurtunity to address their issues.
- Have an induvidual representing a college who will be willing to handle paperwork such as letters to BU so that students dont have to visit the university often.
In conclusion, an application such as Digilocker is convenient for digital storage and during emergencies. A structured and reliable adminstration for physical paperwork is also essential alongside.
