Portals for delivering public services to give special focus on differently-abled: govt official

The Ministry of Electronics and IT is working with other ministries to develop portals where public services can be delivered to citizens through a single platform, with special focus being given on the portal's accessibility to persons with disability, a senior government official said on Thursday.

MeitY Additional Secretary Rajendra Kumar said the government is looking to enhance the share of digital economy to 20 per cent of the GDP in the next 5 years from 5-8 per cent at present, for which it needs to focus on optimum digitisation of resources.

''We are working with all ministries to ensure that their digital interfaces can be transformed. In that transformation, we are keeping accessibility issues in the centre,'' Kumar said at the Broadband India Forum program on Global Accessibility Awareness Day.

He said the national public portals are being developed similar to the National Digital Health Mission where people will be able to access all healthcare facilities through a single platform, instead of creating separate login credentials for each website in the health sector.

''We are working with all government departments to create public digital resources where the goal is to bring all their diverse resources on one common platform where access of services to citizens and businesses can be made seamless.

''The government departments have several websites, and each website requires separate login that makes accessibility difficult,'' Kumar said.

He added that the IT ministry had issued guidelines on making government websites accessible with focus on people with disability in 2009. It has now come up with a framework to make government websites up to district level accessible for them, Kumar added.

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