The first session at NASSCOM India Leadership Forum titled Catalysing IT Transformation: Key Priorities and Challenges was chaired by Rajendra Pawar, Chairman, NIIT Technologies. The speakers of this session were John Sufflock, CIO, UK Government and R Chandrashekhar, Secretary, Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India.
Rajendra Pawar began the session by introducing both the speakers. The first speaker R Chandrashekhar, Indian government s first IT official began by saying that IT in India began to get noticed by the world in the mid 1990s. And it was the knowledge of English and the democratic system of governance that was instrumental in the growth of this industry. However in India the usage of IT was very limited and the government could not reach out to the people without IT. Initially the IT industry looked at US and up to some extent to Europe as their key markets, however recently Indian IT companies see India as a key market.
In 2006 the Indian government initiated the National e-Governance plan to reach out to the people in the rural areas, but they faced two challenges. One was making services and the platform to deliver it available and second being providing assisted access as most people do not have access to a PC and an Internet connection. However in recent times with the increase in PC and broadband penetration things have improved.
Chandrashekhar also added that the government spends huge amounts to deploy IT in various sectors such as education and power. About a month ago the Indian government has established the National Knowledge Network (NKN). The NKN would provide nation-wide ultra high-speed network of 10 GBits/sec and would be used in sectors such as health, research, education etc. Chandrashekhar also spoke about how the UID project was in the pipeline, which was worth between USD 1-2 billion.
Currently there are plans to instruct every state government to allot 2-3 percent of their total state budget to IT. This would amount to investing USD 1.6 2.4 billion in IT alone. Chandrashekhar concluded by saying that for the government, money was not an issue, but the management of the IT initiatives was.
After Chandrashekhar, it was the turn of the second speaker of the session, John Suffolk, CIO, UK Government. Suffolk began by saying that the Indian IT industry is helping shape the world and in UK itself many Indian companies had played an important role in deploying various e-governance projects. In the UK, IT has not only benefitted sectors such as education and health but it has also helped in solving crime. Suffolk added that the UK Government while deploying IT, makes sure it is smarter, cheaper and greener. He also insisted for the success of e-governance projects it is necessary to have award smaller contracts than larger ones.
During the Q&A session, the speakers were asked about their views on SMB IT company s participation in e-governance projects, to which Chandrasekhar replied saying that the e-governance projects deployed in India are huge and they would want companies that not execute the projects but also helps the government mange these in the long run. However, if any SMB IT company feels they can handle such huge projects they should start by deploying smaller projects and once they prove themselves they can go in for bigger projects.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sharon Lobo
Quelle/Source: CXOToday, 09.02.2010
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