Government launches e-greetings portal as part of its Rs 500 Cr Digital India Initiative

Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today launched an e-greetings portal as part of the government's Rs 500 crore 'Digital India Initiative'. He also urged government employees to send greetings to their near and dear ones through the platform. The government is calling this a contemporary and an eco-friendly method of sending greetings to near and dear ones.

Developed by NIC as part of the Digital India initiative, the portal currently consists of mostly Independence Day greetings. Launched on eve of India's 67th Independence Day, the portal has a collection of designs made by the citizens of the country, which have been crowd sourced through the recently launched MyGov portal.

Nearly 3,572 designs were submitted to the MyGov portal (launched last month), out of which 14 were selected. In addition, six greetings have been made by DEITY. The department will award all 14 entries with a cash prize to encourage more participation in the future.

"The innovative beginning of the Information Technology (IT) department is in-consonance with the larger commitment of the PM to ensure that there is a proper IT revolution in India followed by connectivity. E-greetings being created with the larger cooperation of the people of India through crowd sourcing is a step in the right direction," said Prasad.

The portal allows users to select and send a greeting from several templates available. It also has an option for users to select a quote of the PM to be sent as part of the greeting. The departments can also customise the greetings by adding taglines relating to their programmes of public interest.

Launched with designs specific to the Independence Day, designs for other national occasions and festivals are also being developed and will be made available on the portal from time to time.

While the portal was initially developed for government users, it is now open to all citizens for sending greetings to their family and friends. To send e-greeting, users needs to register to the government email service/MyGov platform/India Gov platform.

The Digital India initiative, under which the government proposes to spend Rs 500 crore this financial year, targets to bridge the digital divide across the country. Under this initiative, the government plans to set up broadband network in villages and promote local manufacturing of hardware and Indian software products.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)