New Delhi, Sept 16 (KNN) The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) is working to enhance the contribution of the digital economy to 20 per cent of GDP in the next five years, an official said.

“We have the vision to take the digital part of the economy from currently, 7-8 percent of GDP to over 20 percent in the next 5 years. This is a massive task before us to sensitize all stakeholders, all ministries and to bring them on-board with this vision of massive transformation, led by digital technologies,” Meity Additional Secretary Rajendra Kumar said while addressing a FICCI event on artificial intelligence (AI) on Tuesday.

Dr Kumar said that AI and other emerging technologies will play a key role and without this infusion, we cannot move to raise this contribution to that level in the next 5 years.

''For this, the involvement of all stakeholders is needed,’’ he added.

He further stated that the government has recently undertaken the National Digital Public platform initiative involving various ministries.

“Over 10 key ministries are part of this initiative to ensure all their diverse applications and schemes are integrated over one common platform. This will help in providing a seamless interface to citizens and businesses for various services,” Dr Kumar emphasized.

Highlighting the concerns over data privacy and data protection, Dr Kumar said that many countries have come out with their statutory laws to deal with them. The Government of India has also launched massive efforts to bring all stakeholders together to ensure that we bring a common legal framework on this.

“The personal data protection bill is now in parliament for further approval. Once this becomes an act, it would make India a leading country to have a cutting-edge framework in terms of data protection,” he said.

Dr Kumar also said that the government is also working on the Non-Personal Data front and brought out the framework for public consultation.

“We have received good feedback on this, and once the frameworks are in place, it would make India a leading country in the world with the latest data protection legislation,” he assured.

These legal provisions aim to ensure that data is handled responsibly by stakeholders and data sharing has to be enabled so that start-ups can benefit from it, he added. “We have the vision of growing the economy through the latest technologies and to ensure that we have the latest strategic framework in place for handling data. This would enable the industry to do more innovation,” said Dr Kumar.

Abhishek Singh, CEO, NeGD, MyGov & Digital India Corporation, MeitY said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies have the potential to not just propel the economy but create more jobs also. He further said that we are working to create a cloud-based infrastructure for collaborative platforms which can be used by AI entrepreneurs and start-ups for developing new solutions.

“Ethical data is another very important area. Data, as needed, is primarily used at the aggregate level and not in a way which can be harmful to society. Centre of Excellence AI has been planned to address such concerns,” he said.