The Indira Gandhi National Open University achieved another milestone under Digital India Programme for digital inclusion by signing a MoU on August 22, 2017 with Common Service Centres (CSC) for facilitating the prospective and enrolled students of IGNOU with the facility of online admission form submission, online re-registration, online examination form submission, and other online services made available by IGNOU, including online payment facilitation through the CSC SPV Digital Sewa portal.
Through this collaborative arrangement, over 2 lakhs CSCs will act as a single contact point for all the digital support services of the University.
This initiative will help the IGNOU to outreach its potential students in far flung and disadvantaged regions besides providing alternative digital support helpdesk to urban and semi urban students.
The University is also progressing towards digitising its learning resources (study materials) and students can be benefitted to access its learning resources at CSCs.
The University is planning a series of workshops for the Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) of CSCs to acquaint them about the digital support services to be given to its students. In the first phase, the regional workshops are planned at Lucknow, Patna, Jammu, Ahmedabad, Raipur and Guwahati in the month of September.
The University is also contemplating to train and orient the VLEs to brand its Digital Learning Ambassadors (DLAs).
In an another significant initiative, the University signed a MoU with National e-Governance Division, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) to capacity building initiatives relating to awareness and communication activities under the Digital India Program, jointly developing certificate/ diploma programme in e-Governance besides NeGD assisting the University in developing e-learning portals and digitization of degree / certificates and its storage in digital lockers.
Through this initiative, the University is also contemplating for training and capacity building in e-Governance and also provides certification on successful completion of the programme.