The Department of Information Technology (DIT) is planning to recruit 150 officers to manage the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) as per the records accessed by Governance Now under the RTI.

The officers will be placed at National e-Governance Division (NeGD) which has been established as part of Media Lab Asia (MLA), a section 25 company under DIT. Out of these 150 officers 21 will be based at the Centre and 129 at the state e-mission teams to be placed in various states. The Government is planning to take 40% of the staff on deputation and 60% will be recruited from open market on contract.

Government of India has approved the Capacity Building (CB) scheme under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) at an outlay of Rs. 313 Crores in January 2008. In February 2008 DIT engaged the services of National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) at a cost of Rs 3.28 Crores to manage the capacity building management cell (CBMC) based at the e-Governance Programme Management Unit (EGPMU) of DIT. NISG in-turn engaged the services of Ernst & Young at the cost of Rs 2.7 Crore for one year to manage the CBMC.

As part of the CBMC consulting assignment Ernst & Young identified five agencies namely Price Waterhouse Coopers, KPMG, IL&FS, Wipro and 3i Technologies which will form for SeMTs in the states. It also identified two agencies namely, Ma Foi Management Consultants Ltd and Team Lease-People Strong Consortium for selection of staff on contractual basis. CBMC also selected NISG (the company which engaged Ernst & Young) for training initiatives as part of capacity building for NeGP. The CBMC team also assisted in selection of Recruitment Management System, a software for management of staff . The cell also prepared the organization manual, HR policy manual, recruitment / selection process guidelines for National e-Governance Agency (NeGA) which was to be formed as a special purpose vehicle to manage the NeGP.  

However the proposal of NeGA did not find favor with the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) and therefore the Committee of Secretaries (CoS) subsequently recommended establishment of an Independent Business Division (IBD) within Media Lab Asia, a section 25 not-for-profit company under DIT for capacity building under the NeGP.

Thereafter the services of the consultants (Ernst & Young) were extended in May 2009 for seven months at an additional cost of Rs 74.38 lakhs to ensure that the CBMC deliverables are revised for the NeGD.

Now this IBD would play the role of central agency for implementation and monitoring of NeGP and the CB scheme. The IBD called National e-Governance Division (NeGD) has been established within Media Lab Asia (MLA) and Additional Secretary (e-Gov) has been made the acting President and CEO of the Division. NeGD has recently advertised for the various positions including for the post of President & CEO on deputation basis.