DigiLocker- A free secure and easy to use application.

DigiLocker- A free secure and easy to use application. DigiLocker is a key initiative under Digital India, the Indian Government’s flagship program aimed at transforming India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. DigiLocker ties into Digital India’s visions areas of providing citizens a shareable private space on a public cloud and making all documents / certificates available on this cloud.

Targeted at the idea of paperless governance, DigiLocker is a platform for issuance and verification of documents & certificates in a digital way, thus eliminating the use of physical documents. Indian citizens who sign up for a DigiLocker account get a dedicated cloud storage space that is linked to their Aadhaar (UIDAI) number. Organizations that are registered with Digital Locker can push electronic copies of documents and certificates (e.g. driving license, Voter ID, School certificates) directly into citizens lockers. Citizens can also upload scanned copies of their legacy documents in their accounts. These legacy documents can be electronically signed using the eSign facility.

The platform has the following benefits:

1. Citizens can access their digital documents anytime, anywhere and share it online. This is convenient and time saving.
2. It reduces the administrative overhead of Government departments by minimizing the use of paper.
3. Digital Locker makes it easier to validate the authenticity of documents as they are issued directly by the registered issuers.
4. Self-uploaded documents can be digitally signed using the eSign facility (which is similar to the process of self-attestation).

The following are the key stakeholders in the DigiLocker system:

Issuer: Entity issuing e-documents to individuals in a standard format and making them electronically available e.g. CBSE, Registrar Office, Income Tax department, etc.
Requester: Entity requesting secure access to a particular e-document stored within a repository (e.g. University, Passport Office, Regional Transport Office, etc.)
Resident: An individual who uses the Digital Locker service based on Aadhaar number.

The main technology components of the DigiLocker system are:

Repository: Collection of e-documents that is exposed via standard APIs for secure, real-time access.
Access Gateway: Secure online mechanism for requesters to access e-documents from various repositories in real-time using URI (Uniform Resource Indicator).
DigiLocker Portal: Dedicated cloud based personal storage space, linked to each resident’s Aadhaar for storing e-documents, or URIs of e-documents.

Components of DigiLocker:

Each resident’s DigiLocker account has the following sections:

i. Dashboard – This section is the first page you see when you login and shows a summary of all your documents.
ii. Issued Documents – This section shows the URIs (links) of the documents or certificates issued to you by the Govt. department or other agencies participating in DigiLocker.
iii. Uploaded Documents – This section shows all the documents which are uploaded by you. You can update the document type, eSign and share these uploaded documents.
iv. Shared Documents – This sections shows the list of documents which you share with others (via email).
v. Activity – This section is a log of the activities you performed in you DigiLocker account. The log included the details about the activities such as file upload, download, eSign etc.
vi. Issuers – This section lists the departments and agencies that are registered on DigiLocker as Issuers. If these departments have issued any document/certificate to you, it will appear in the form of a URI (link) in your Issued Documents section.

Security Features of DigiLocker:

DigiLocker is safe and secure to use. We are taking all precautionary measures to ensure your data is protected and uncompromised. Please find the list of security measures that have been implemented till now. This list will expand as more safety features get added.
i. 256 Bit SSL Encryption – DigiLocker uses 256 bit secure socket layer (SSL) Encryption for information transmitted during any activity.
ii. Mobile Authentication based Sign Up - DigiLocker uses mobile authentication based signup via OTP (one time password) for authenticating users and allowing access to the platform.
iii. ISO 27001 certified Data Centre - The application is hosted in a ISO 27001 security certified data centre.
iv. Data Redundancy - Data is backed up in secure environment with proper redundancy.
v. Timed Log Out – To protect citizen’s account from unauthorized access, our system is designed to terminate session automatically if extended inactivity is detected.
vi. Security Audit - The DigiLocker application has been security audited by a recognized audit agency and the application security audit certificate has been obtained.

How to Signup for DigiLocker:

Signing up for DigiLocker is easy - all you need is your mobile number.
Your mobile number will be authenticated by sending an OTP (one-time password) followed by selecting a username & password. This will create your DigiLocker account.
After your DigiLocker account is successfully created, you can voluntarily provide your Aadhaar number (issued by UIDAI) to avail additional services.


In Case of forget username and password- To recover your username/password, please visit https://digitallocker.gov.in/index.php and use the Forgot Password/Forgot Username link.
The information displayed in your Aadhaar profile in your DigiLocker account (like name, address, email, mobile etc) is for display purposes. This data is only fetched from UIDAI and it is not possible to make any changes to this data from DigiLocker. To make changes to your Aadhaar data, please visit your nearest Aadhaar enrolment center.

Types of Documents to be uploaded on DigiLocker:

Issued documents are e-documents issued by various government agencies in electronic format and the URI of these documents is pushed into the issued documents section of DigiLocker based on the Aadhaar number.
Whereas uploaded documents are those e-documents uploaded directly by the DigiLocker user.
Once a registered issuer in the DigiLocker system issues an e-document for a particular Aadhaar number and the respective DigiLocker account already exists for that Aadhaar number, the URI for that document will be get pushed automatically into the locker.
If the respective DigiLocker account gets created at a later date, then the URI will get pushed at that time.

How to upload your Documents in DigiLocker:

Click the upload icon to start uploading a document. In the file upload dialog box, locate the file from your local drive and select 'open' to complete the uploading.
i. To assign a document type to your uploaded file, click 'select doc type'. This will show a pop up with a drop down selection of various document types. Choose the appropriate document type and click 'save'.
ii. You can also edit the name of the file using the edit icon next to the filename.
Maximum allowed file size is 10MB.

File types that can be uploaded - pdf, jpeg & png.

A URI is a Uniform Resource Identifier generated by the issuer department, which is mandatory for every e-document of the DigiLocker system. This unique URI can be resolved to a full URL (Uniform Resource Locator) to access the actual document in its appropriate repository.

eSIGN Service:

eSign service is an easy, efficient and secure way of digitally signing electronic documents. With this service, any Aadhaar holder can digitally sign an electronic document without having to obtain a physical digital signature dongle.

The signer is authenticated using Aadhaar eKYC services. You can use eSign service to digitally sign the self-uploaded documents in DigiLocker as a method of self attestation.