Government documents, records, certificates, etc. especially those belonging to citizens, should be digitized and made universally accessible through mandating use of standards and protocols. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) should be published in conformance with an Open API policy so that data and services are exposed to the outside system for its efficient use. Easy access to the digital resources will help in developing mobile apps and other online applications as value added services by developers and users. Two or more data sets representing similar data may be provided as a linkable data set. Citizens should not be asked to provide government documents or certificates, which are already available with some department/institution of the government, in physical form. Portability of all electronic documents should also be ensured. As an example, the educational institutions should ensure that all their past degrees and certificates are digitized can kept in their data-centres/cloud with appropriate access protocols. The citizen, while filling some application form should not be asked to submit the certified copies of his/her educational certificates but should provide details of these certificates which can be seen by the concerned agency using the pointer provided by the citizen.

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Ideas and inputs are welcome on how digital resources can be created and provided for universal access. The suggestions may include technical architecture and platform, software, authentication mechanisms, citizen interfaces, policy guidelines, process improvements, operational efficiency, implementation procedures, etc. Various means by which digital resources can be made available to the citizens for use & type of data that should be exposed may also be advised. You can upload your ideas in doc or pdf format.