E-governance policy by March

NEW DELHI: The Department of Information Technology (DIT) will finalise the agenda for national e-governance policy by the end of the current fiscal.
DIT is hopeful of finalising the agenda for the e-governance policy by the end of March 2003, sources told PTI on Sunday.
It assumes importance in the context of Communications and IT Minister Pramod Mahajan''s recent announcement that he would take it up with the Finance Minister to make the current three per cent budget allocation to IT in all government departments mandatory.
The agenda, which will chart a roadmap for policy and projects, will see to it that once the basic infrastructure is in place, subsequent action could take place, they said.
It is important to have a policy first and then keep looking at the required changes as and when warranted, sources said, adding the agenda would include technology standards, funding mechanism, HRD strategy playing the role of indicators to the states.
DIT has a Rs 70-crore budget for the current fiscal and significant amount of this budget has been spent already on various projects taken up in coordination with several states.
E-governance cannot be enforced by DIT on the states, therefore, while they are free to draw their own e-governance policies, they can improvise or move along with the national policy.
Currently, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Manipur, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh are among the states which have e-governance policies of their own and companies like Microsoft and IBM are betting big on this particular segment.