Speaking at a Confederation of Indian Industry session on Digital Maharashtra, department of information technology additional secretary S Lakshminarayanan quoted from the latest UNDP report on the e-government index for 133 countries which gave India 1.29 points on a scale of 0-4. “This index places India below countries like Poland, Armenia and 60 other countries. We are aware of this and hence the allocation of funds,” he said.
Emphasising the importance of transparency, he indicated that the government systems have to be re-engineered. He added, “Unless we do this, the hype about India becoming a superpower will soon disappear.”
Commenting on some of the e-governance projects already implemented in the country, he touched upon the benefits accruing from these projects. These were namely in areas like land records, registration and treasury department. Some e-governance projects implemented in the southern states and in Maharashtra are doing well, he added and the government is looking at providing funds and setting up the necessary infrastructure for e-governance projects. At the Centre, there is a nationwide roll-out in the railways, customs, central excise, postal department, passports, direct taxes sectors.
On the payment gateway scenario in India, Mr Lakshminarayanan said the Central Certifying Authority (CCA) has received about 4,500 applications from different public sector and private firms for the appointment of a Digital Signature Certifying Authority (DSCA) and has till now appointed Tata Consultancy Services, Safe-scrypt, National Informatics Centre and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd as certifying authorities. He added that the CCA has decided to decrease the bank guarantee for companies applying for DSCA from the current Rs 10 crore to Rs one crore.
“The decrease in bank guarantee will lead to a decrease in the cost of digital signature at the retail end. We want to see to it that the customer cost for a digital signature should come down from Rs 3,000 to Rs 30 and we think that it is possible. That is the reason why we recently issued a notification on this issue,” he said.
Quelle: The Financial Express, 02.12.2003
