DigiLocker


DigiLocker is an online service provided by Ministry of Electronics and IT, Government of India under its Digital India initiative. DigiLocker provides an account in cloud to every Aadhaar holder to access authentic documents/certificates such as driving license, vehicle registration, academic mark sheet in digital format from the original issuers of these certificates. It also provides 1GB storage space to each account to upload scanned copies of legacy documents.
Users need to possess an Aadhaar number to use DigiLocker. For sign-up, the Aadhaar number and the one-time password sent to the Aadhaar-registered mobile number, need to be entered.
The beta version of the service was rolled out in February 2015, and launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 1 July 2015. The storage space provided was 100 MB initially, and was later increased to 1 GB. The individual file size for upload cannot exceed 10 MB.
In July 2016, DigiLocker recorded 20.13 lakh users with a repository of 24.13 lakh documents. The number of users saw a large jump of 7.53 lakh in April when the government had urged all municipal bodies to use DigiLocker to make their administration paperless.
From 2017, the facility was extended to allow students of ICSE board to store their class X and XII certificates in DigiLocker and share them with agencies as required. In February 2017, Kotak Mahindra Bank started providing access to documents in DigiLocker from within its net-banking application, allowing users to e-sign them and forward as needed. In May 2017, over 108 hospitals, including the Tata Memorial Hospital were planning to launch the use of DigiLocker for storing cancer patients' medical documents and test reports. According to a UIDAI architect,
patients would be provided a number key, which they can share with another hospital to allow them to access their test reports.
As of December 2019, DigiLocker provides access to over 372+ crore authentic documents from 149 issuers. Over 3.3 crore users are registered on DigiLocker. 43 requester organisations are accepting documents from DigiLocker.
There is also an associated facility for e-signing documents. The service is intended to minimise the use of physical documents, reduce administrative expenses, provide authenticity of the e-documents, provide secure access to government-issued documents and to make it easy for the residents to receive services.

Structure of DigiLocker

Each user's digital locker has the following sections.
Digital Locker is not merely a technical platform. Ministry of Electronics and IT, Government of India also notified for Digital Locker. Amendments made to these rules in February 2017 state that the issued documents provided and shared through Digital Locker are at par with the corresponding physical certificates.
According to this Rule, – Issuers may start issuing and Requesters may start accepting digitally signed certificates or documents shared from subscribers’ Digital Locker accounts at par with the physical documents in accordance with the provisions of the Act and rules made thereunder.
When such certificate or document mentioned in sub-rule has been issued or pushed in the Digital Locker System by an issuer and subsequently accessed or accepted by a requester through the URI, it shall be deemed to have been shared by the issuer directly in electronic form.

Important Notifications from Government Departments Regarding DigiLocker

Following are the security measures used in the system