Be it the ambitious Special Incentive Package Scheme (SIPS) to encourage investments in semiconductor fabrication and other micro and nano-technology industries, or the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), the Department of IT is the nerve-centre of many flagship programmes and initiatives being rolled out by the Government. While 12 PV projects under SIPS have already been granted the in-principle nod and given an August-end deadline for the financial closure, on the e-gov ernance side, the DIT hopes that rollout of one lakh common service centres (CSCs) would be completed by June 2010.
eWorld caught up with the IT Secretary, R. Chandrashekhar, to discuss a broad range of issues such as NeGP, IT Amendment Act as well as the response to the IT Investment Regions (ITIR) policy.
Excerpts from the chat:
The ITIR policy was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in April 2008. Since then, how many States have evinced interest in ITIRs or prepared project reports?
Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu had indicated their interest but we are still looking for detailed proposals from these States. For instance, they have to identify a specific area, extent of land, infrastructure linkages, among others. These are at a preliminary stage so they have not got down to identifying specific parcels of land or capacities for the infrastructure. As of now, they have just said that they are interested and would be working out the details.
Also, I suppose, they are re-evaluating the situation in the backdrop of the current market conditions. I mean, issues such as how much of investment are you likely to get, which kind of companies would be interested, the level of interest that companies have to set up presence in ITIRs, etc. As you know, the growth rate in the IT sector has come down sharply — that has its own implication for projected requirement of infrastructure and overall plans. Hence, these States are looking at the whole issue with reference to the current scenario.
What is the update on the rules and regulations around the provisions of the IT Amendment legislation?
We have already published the draft rules on the Internet on some of the critical sections. We hope to be able to enforce the amended Act, which requires these rules, sometime around July. Specifically, the critical sections pertain to interception of data and communication, and the specified and designated authorities to be vested with various responsibilities.
Have you outlined the 100-day action plan for your Department? Also, the progress on rollout of common service centres has been slow. By when is that likely to be completed?
If you look at the President’s announcement for the 100-day programme, the main item against the Department of IT was to initiate steps to make e-governance services available in Bharat Nirman kiosks in all the panchayats.
These kiosks are CSCs repositioned to become Bharat Nirman kiosks. The CSC programme entailed establishment of one lakh kiosks and the number of panchayats are 2.43 lakh, so we are still working out the detailed action plan to do that — which is what will come out in the course of the 100-day plan.
There are three major parts to this.
Our first goal is to complete the rollout of one lakh CSCs. Yes, there have been slight delays due to general slowdown, difficulties faced by some operators in raising funds and the entire election process, but the programme is on track. Today, we have crossed 40 per cent or 40,000 CSCs. We expect to reach the figure of one lakh between April and June 2010. From here, we expect things to pick up. But the more important question that we are dealing with is how to speed up the Government services.
Could you elaborate on that point? What has necessitated the roll-out of Government services earlier than was originally intended?
In the original plan of common service centres, we had assumed there would be a three-year period in which the Government services would build-up…These things take time as some States do it faster, some slower, some services are more complicated than others …So, all-in-all, the build-up to substantial levels would have taken about three years.
Today, what has prompted a bit of a course correction on that is that many of the CSC operators, during the bid process, have perhaps factored-in — despite explicit provisions to the contrary — some revenue from Government services also. Therefore, the sustainability of the CSCs requires some support of Government services sooner than later… Simply put, our estimate was a higher quantum of Government support because Government services would take a little time to build up. In the competitive process, people bid lower, perhaps factoring-in revenue from the Government services. So, it is now important for us to get the Government services running as quickly as possible, and faster than we had originally planned for.
We are working out a game plan to fast-track the Government services (available through CSCs). For that we are looking at a timeline of June to December 2010.
The other critical aspect is connectivity… everyone knows we do not have connectivity in all villages today. We have been working with the Department of Telecom, telecom service providers and USOF to fast-track the connectivity aspect. Our strategy is three-fold. Complete the roll-out of the 1,00,000 kiosks, speed-up the connectivity rollout, and speed up the rollout of Government services.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee
Quelle/Source: The Hindu Business Line, 20.07.2009
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