No Need to Carry Documents: How Govt’s DigiLocker App Works

The government has approved the decision to carry the digital version of their documents via the DigiLocker app.

DigiLocker will provide the users with 1GB of cloud storage to store their documents, in order to minimise the use of physical documents.

(Photo: The Quint)

The government this week announced that documents such as the driving license, PAN card, Voter ID, Car Registration as well as school and college certificates will now be accepted when presented in the digital form. For this very purpose, they have launched a cloud based app called DigiLocker.

The DigiLocker will provide users with 1GB of cloud storage for their documents, in order to minimise the use of physical documents.

The cloud storage on DigiLocker is linked to a person's Aadhaar number.

It looks like a great idea to reduce the hassle of carrying paperwork all the time (Don't forget the constant stress of losing something).

Here's How to Set it Up:

• Download the DigiLocker App on your Android/iOS smartphone
• Upon opening, the app wil ask you to sign up using your phone number. Enter your phone number and click continue.

• The app will send you an OTP, enter OTP in the space given on the app.

• Then, the app will ask you to create a username and password for yourself.

Setting up the username is complicated. It should be between 3-50 characters and the app says it can contain only lowercase letters, number and special characters.

There are only certain symbols you can use but even after using the said symbols, I was not able to register successfully. After a while, i signed up from my email ID to be able to get the username right.

While entering your password also, you have to use combinations of letters, numbers and symbols. Here also you can only use specific symbols.

• After signing up successfully, the app will ask you to register you Aadhaar number, along with an acknowledgement that you have given your consent to DigiLocker to use your Aadhaar number.

• After putting in your Aadhaar number, the app will again send an OTP to the mobile number and email ID registered with the Aadhaar number. Enter the OTP in the given space and click continue.

• You will see a pop-up saying that it is fetching data from the UIDAI.

After its done loading, you will see your Aadhaar card on the app. You have successfully set up your DigiLocker.

Now after logging in to the app, you will see three tabs on the top - Dashboard, Issued and Uploaded:

Dashboard

• Your Dashboard shows you the summary of your documents. It shows the number of uploaded and issued documents as well as notifications that mostly ask you to issue the rest of your documents from the respective ministries.

Issued Documents

• This section shows you the documents you have issued on your DigiLocker.

Uploaded Documents

• This section shows all the documents which are uploaded by you.

There is a menu at the left side of the interface that lets you control your profile and settings, apart from the above mentioned categories. These options are very limited in this version of the app.

The only purpose of Settings is to set up a PIN to access your app

To get your documents issued, the DigiLocker website says that people can go to the "Pull Partner Documents" section, select the issuer and document type and enter the document details asked for.

Within the app, the “Pull Partner Documents” option is nowhere to be found. 

I had to either click the notification on the Dashboard page or go to the website to upload my driving license on the app.

All in all, this step from the government does deserve appreciation. However, there have been cases reported that the cops are not accepting the digital documents in many parts. But this can be because it is a new initiative and not a lot of people know about it.

According to the DigiLocker website, 1,36,83,244 users have registered for the app and 2,92,30,74,993 documents have been issued from partners.

The app, however, is glitchy and not very user friendly. You will get pop ups saying invalid request and the server often takes too long to respond, but we are expecting new updates to make it smoother.

Is It Safe?

• DigiLocker uses 256 bit secure socket layer (SSL) encryption for information transmitted during any activity.
• It uses mobile authentication based signup via OTP (one time password) for authenticating users and allowing access to the platform.
• To protect citizen’s account from unauthorised access, the system is designed to terminate session automatically after a certain time of inactivity.