What is Digilocker - Uses, Advantages, Disadvantages

Digilocker is one of the many Indian Government Services where you can store your documents in digital form (e-form) and access them through your phone, computer, etc. with only your Aadhar Number.

When we break the word DIGILOCKER, we get two words, i.e. DIGITAL and LOCKER. In essence, digilocker is a digital space where you can store your documents, generate new documents that are already government approved in offline medium and access to your previously added documents at one place.

In this article, we are going to discuss and analyze the use of digital locker as a digital vault for storing documents, its advantages and disadvantages. We will also discuss whether it is alright to use digilocker to store more than government documents, i.e. property papers, agreements etc.

Advantages of Digilocker

Convenient: Digilocker is convenient when it comes to storing and accessing data, as you can easily store and access your data from anywhere as long as you have a smartphone or a computer and a good internet connection.

Secure Storage: While it is a storage for you official documents, no other party or third party can access to your data until you have given access to them. I personally use DigiLocker because of this feature. Only you can access the data with your ID (Aadhar or Mobile number).

Easy Sharing: This is related to the secure storage feature. This feature let's you share the documents with third party by sharing it directly or giving them access of a particular document.

Government Interaction: As DigiLocker is a government application, you can directly fetch your government issued documents, such as driving license, aadhar card, pan card, rashan card, class 10 and 12 marksheet, by using the particular identification number of your document.

Authentication: The documents you store in DigiLocker are considered as legally valid because you can only add the documents in DigiLocker by using proper issuing number of the certificate. Until you do this, DigiLocker won't let you add any other documents.

These were some advantages that I came across while using DigiLocker. Let me tell you, I have using DigiLocker since 2021 and am still using it. After using for so long you can easily conclude that it is worth using.

Disadvantages of Digilocker

Internet Dependent: As you have already guessed, using Digilocker requires internet. You need internet to add documents, to view documents, to share documents. It is one of the major disadvantage why most people don't use this.

Using Digilocker in poor network areas will cause you trouble accessing your documents.

Digital Knowledge: You need to know how internet works otherwise you won't be able to use it. You atleast know English and basic internet to use Digilocker.

Privacy Concerns:  Using Digilocker, which is a digital platform, to store personal information is cause of concern for many as people don't trust even using GDrive to store personal information then how can they trust Digilocker?

It is up to you whether you want to use it or not, buSot as it is a government issued application, government can already access all your government issued document. So, I don't there is any issue using it. But the ultimate decision depends on you.

Compatibility: Some organizations can still require physical documents to verify your details and they do not take Digilocker issued documents. For that purpose you need the original or photocopied document.

So, these were some disadvantages that I came across while using the application.

Conclusion

Now, it is completely up to you if you want to use it or not. No one is forcing you to use it. In conclusion, Digilocker is a useful platform for storing your important documents and while it has some advantages it has some disadvantages too. It is still not the best in terms of usability but I hope the developers do something to make user friendly so that digitally challenged people can also use it.