Pvt think tanks to help in planning e-gov

NEW DELHI: We have heard of private players implementing e-governance projects. The government could do with some more help – the IT ministry may soon seek the services of consultancies and private IT think tanks for planning e-governance projects under the national e-governance plan (NeGP).

The proposal forms part of a capacity building scheme that is undergoing the final process of approval. The NeGP aims at transforming the manual task of registration and clearance issuing of government services into an electronic medium for interaction between government departments and between the government and the citizen.

While the NeGP has been initiated by the centre, the implemention of the mission mode projects (MMPs) is decentralised. The MMPs include national ID, central excise, income tax, passport, pensions, banking, and insurance, land records, property registration, transport, agriculture, municipalities, gram panchayats, commercial taxes, treasuries, police and employment exchange.

While the implementation of these projects is often done on a private-public partnership model, the task of state-level planning is taken up by the state e-government council and state apex committees which comprise bureaucrats.

Having found that most of these state level planning authorities lack technical expertise, the ministry has sought a talent pool for proper understanding of project management, business process engineering, financial modelling and technology deployment.

The ministry has formulated a Rs 350-crore scheme that would assist the state-level authorities to set up state e-governance mission teams (SeMTs) and project e-governance mission teams (PeMTs). These teams will comprise experts in the field of technology and planning. These teams will however only advise the state authorities.

“Such expertise will accelerate the execution of the projects and help them to proceed systematically,” said a government official. The scheme will be implemented over a period of three years.

It will roll out the procedures of employing experts from government departments, consultancies and private IT companies. While applicants who are already government employees will be deputed to SeMTs or PeMTs, applicants from private companies will be hired on contractual basis on terms that the market offers. The services of consultancies will be acquired on wet lease basis.

neha.kohli@timesgroup.com