The aim of this article is to propose a new three-parameter discrete Lindley distribution. A wide range of its structural properties are investigated. This includes the shape of the probability mass function, hazard rate function, moments, skewness, kurtosis, index of dispersion, mean residual life, mean past life and stress-strength reliability. These properties are expressed in explicit forms. The maximum likelihood approach is used to estimate the model parameters. A detailed simulation study is carried out to examine the bias and mean square error of the estimators. Using the proposed distribution, a new first-order integervalued autoregressive process is introduced for the over-dispersed, equi-dispersed and under-dispersed time series of counts. To demonstrate the importance of the proposed distribution, three data sets on coronavirus, length of stay at psychiatric ward and monthly counts of larceny calls are analyzed. INDEX TERMS Survival discretization method, over-dispersion, INAR(1) process, simulation.