Former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai in Gadkari's special team to push tech for roads, ports

By Anirban Sen & Neha Alawadhi


BENGALURU|NEW DELHI: Transport minister Nitin Gadkari is putting together a special 10-member task force, which includes former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai, to help drive new technology initiatives for roads, highways and ports along with assisting in integrating existing egovernance and other technology projects under one umbrella.

Headed and chaired by Gadkari, the task force will work on new strategies under a four-year plan to ensure that technology remains at the core of every major road and transport initiative as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India vision, three people familiar with the matter said.

The group’s second meeting is scheduled for the first week of April, they said, adding that the first meeting was on March 9.

Other members of the task force include former IT secretary for Andhra Pradesh Sanjay Jaju, partner at Ekam ConsultingAbhijit Purushottam Desai, Disha Consultants director Prashant Pole and Girish Srivastava, a policy and strategy consultant.

“We are building an enterprise architecture and architecture for the ministry to bring together all these disparate projects in a unified form. Certain new initiatives are also planned,” said Jaju, director of National Highways Infrastructure Development Corporation.

A road transport and highways official said the idea was a strategy and policy intervention built on the principle of ‘minimum government, maximum governance’. “How we can involve and inform stakeholders, and see how citizen services could be?” said the official, who did not wish to be named.

The initiative is likely to throw up a new opportunity for domestic software services vendors such as Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys which have over the past decade lagged multinational tech firms such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HP) on their home turf.

“The task force’s main agenda of the task force is to make sure that all IT initiatives are put under a proper governance mechanism and there is synergy between the various components,” said a third person, requesting anonymity.

“Two main things that are being worked upon right now are INAMPRO and PACE (Project Appraisal and Continuing Enhancements) – it is an MIS system for roads and highways,” said Jaju.