The Narendra Modi government banned the use of 224 smart phone applications in the wake of ongoing India-China military standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh. Now, it is in the process of identifying the “best Indian app” under various digital initiatives.
The government informed Parliament on Wednesday that it was viewing around 7,000 applications received by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The ministry will identify best Indian apps for the citizens.
The MeitY informed Parliament that the smart phone applications, including Chinese apps such as TikTok, Helo and WeChat under the provisions of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 in the interest of “sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India and security of State”.
The MeitY, in partnership with the Atal Innovation Mission of Niti Aayog, launched Digital India Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge to identify the best Indian Apps that are already being used by citizens and have the potential to scale and become world class Apps in their respective categories.
A total of 6,940 applications under various categories have been received. The ministry said the government launches apps from time to time for the citizens to promote its Digital India initiative.
Further, the government has also shared data on number of its websites that were hacked in recent times. The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), which tracks such cases, reported a total number of 54 websites belonging to the government ministries or departments at central and state levels were hacked in 2019. The corresponding number for this year (till August) stood at 37.
Further, a total number of 15 instances of insecure data hosting of government website-based services were reported in 2020 (till August). Remedial measures were suggested to owners of affected websites and services.
But the concerned ministry has said that cyber security mock drills are being conducted regularly to enable assessment of cyber security posture and preparedness of organisations in government and critical sectors.
A total of 49 such drills have so far been conducted by CERT-In where 434 organisations from different states and sectors such as Finance, Defence, Power, Telecom, Transport, Energy, Space, and IT/ITeS participated.
The Modi government set up ‘MeitY Start-up Hub” (MSH) for promoting technology innovation and start-ups. The mandate of MSH is to build a favourable innovation ecosystem by bringing together various technology stakeholders.
Through MSH portal, more than 2,000 tech startups, 350 incubators, 285 mentors, 22 domain specific Centres of Excellence (CoEs) and 25 industry partners have been connected for facilitating criss-crossing of technology resources, sharing best practices and ideas across the entire innovation and startup ecosystem.
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