The government of India came with big advertisements in a national daily on June 21, for requirement of private sector professionals and government officials on deputation for state e-mission teams (SeMT) to be constituted in various states. However the advertisement goes short of clarifying the recruitment agency, whether it is Department of Information Technology or National e-governance division (NeGD) within Media lab Asia or National Institute for Smart Government (NISG).

Though the advertisement points to the link www.nisg.org and www.negp.gov.in but both the websites fall short of explaining how the recruitment process has to be followed. Whereas the www.negp.gov.in takes you to the e-governance page on DIT website (www.mit.gov.in), there are no details on the website of Media Lab Asia (www.medialabasia.in ), the  link on NISG website suggests  clicking on the NISG career page or visit the link http://nisg.blueshift.com/rmsextranet/. A visit to the said link of recruitment management system of NISG (http://nisg.blueshift.com/rmsextranet/Login.aspx ) leaves us nowhere as the system is not working further.

Also the whole process appears to be confusing as the recruitments are for state governments which are being done by central government’s Department of IT. DIT has further given work to NeGD within the Media Lab Asia. It appears that Media Lab Asia has outsourced this job to NISG which in-turn is taking help of Blueshift, a private sector company. Experts say that this long chain of delegation is essentially to avoid the recruitment checks and balances of the government and bypass the standard recruitment procedure of the government.

A search within the DIT website leads one to the advertisement in the career section (http://mit.gov.in/content/dit-vacancies ). This advertisement has a circular no. NeGD/25/2010  dated June 21, 2010 but this circular is essentially for recruitment on deputation. The para 2 reads, “The NeGD is in the process of filling up various posts on deputation basis in SeMTs in all 35 States and Union Territories of India from amongst the officers in Central Government/ State Government/PSUs /Autonomous bodies.” How come the circular for deputation posts became advertisement for private sector professionals is not explainable.

Anyways with no details on various websites the government has failed its first test for recruitment for e-governance.