Digi Locker/Digital Locker

DigiLocker is a "digital locker" service launched by the Government of India in February 2015 to provide a secure dedicated personal electronic space for storing the documents of resident Indian citizens.^[2] The storage space (maximum 10 MB at the time of launching & now upgraded to 1GB) is linked to the Unique Identification Authority of India (Aadhaar number) of the user. The space can be utilized for storing personal documents like University certificates, Permanent account number (PAN) cards,

voter id cards, etc., and the URIs of the e-documents issued by various issuer departments. There is also an associated facility for e-signingdocuments. The service is intended to minimize the use of physical documents and to provide authenticity of the e-documents. It will also provide secure access to government issued documents. It is also intended to reduce administrative expenses of government departments and agencies and to make it easy for the residents to receive services. To signup the user must possess an Aadhar Card and a mobile number linked to it(Now linking to Aadhar number is not mandatory - You just need a mobile number to create an account in Digilocker).

DigiLocker is one of the key initiatives under the Digital India Programme. This was released by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Government of India.

Key stakeolders of DigiLocker 

The three key stakeholders of the DigiLocker platform are citizens, issuers and requesters. Let’s see how these stakeholders interact with the DigiLocker:

Citizens

Citizens can store or access their documents using the DigiLocker. They can store either an uploaded or issued document on the DigiLocker.

Uploaded document: Citizens may upload scanned copies of their important documents including the driving license, voter’s ID card (EPIC), passport, marks sheets, income tax statements, etc. They can use the DigiLocker to submit a digitally signed copy to a government agency if required by that agency. However, the agency must be registered as a requester with the DigiLocker.

Issued documents: These are e-documents that have been issued on the DigiLocker by a registered issuer who pushes the Uniform Resource Indicator (URI) of the e-documents to the digilockers of citizens, based on their Aadhaar numbers. These are stored in a central repository, and citizens can see and share their respective URI links.

Issuers

Various government agencies are registered with DigiLocker as issuers and they can issue e-documents to citizens. These agencies include CBSE, Registrar Office, Income Tax Department, and so on. In 2016, CBSE issued the class 12th result, while NEET issued the rank letter, on DigiLocker. Also, all the CBSE results now onwards would be issued on DigiLocker. DigiLocker also provides the facility for issuers to issue legacy data but that would require Aadhaar seeding in the issuers’ legacy databases.

Requesters

A requester, in the context of DigiLocker, is a government department that offers citizen services (the revenue department, a passport office or a municipality) or an organization that requires documentation (banks, telcos, etc.). In order to provide a government service, a government agency needs to ascertain an individual’s identity, age or nationality, for which various standard and supporting documents issued by multiple government agencies may be required. In order to provide its services, the requester can request for digital versions of those documents and accept those online through the DigiLocker.

Structure of the digital locker

Each user’s digital locker has the following sections.

• My Certificates: This section has two subsections:

• Digital Documents: This contains the URI's of the documents issued to the user by government departments or other agencies.
• Uploaded Documents: This subsection lists all the documents which are uploaded by the user. Each file to be uploaded should not be more than 10MB in size. Only pdf, jpg, jpeg, png, bmp and gif file types can be uploaded.

• My Profile: This section displays the complete profile of the user as available in the UIDAI database.
• My Issuer: This section displays the issuers' names and the number of documents issued to the user by the issuer.
• My Requester: This section displays the requesters' names and the number of documents requested from the user by the requesters.
• Directories: This section displays the complete list of registered issuers and requesters along with their URLs.

How can I get a DigiLocker account?

Signing up for DigiLocker is easy - all you need is your mobile number.

• Your mobile number will be authenticated by sending an OTP (one-time password) followed by selecting a username & password. This will create your DigiLocker account.
• After your DigiLocker account is successfully created, you can voluntarily provide your Aadhaar number (issued by UIDAI) to avail additional services.