Union minister of state for personnel, public grievances and pensions and prime minister's office (PMO), V. Narayanasamy today said “India has to import hardware worth 400 billion dollars if we do not concentrate on this sector and obtain advanced technologies."

“Though India has emerged a frontrunner in the software sector, it faces competition from countries like China in hardware industry which needs to be given adequate support”, said Narayanasamy.

He emphasized to the IT minister, Sachin Pilot that in the challenge thrown by China, lot of concessions are also required for the Indian software industry. 

He said that there is a plan of central government to provide training under skill development programme to 60 crore people in ten years at a cost of Rs 60,000 crore.

Narayanasamy mentioned that the government has introduced, “The Right of Citizens for Time Bound Delivery of Goods and Services and Redressal of their Grievances Bill, 2011” and the “Electronic Service Delivery Bill, 2011” in parliament and hope to get them passed in the budget session. He said that both the bills are complimentary to each other and will improve delivery of public services.

The minister also said that the government of India also plans to collect data from various ministries / government agencies and place them on a common repository so that a large number of people can take advantage of the same.

The central secretariat manual of e-office procedures prepared by the department of administrative reforms & public grievances was also released during the event.

Secretary, DAR&PG, R C Mishra later speaking in a panel discussion mentioned that the implementation of e-office mission mode project is very slow as there are numerous challenges which need to be overcome. 

The conference has been jointly organised by the department of administrative reforms and public grievances and department of IT, government of India with the department of IT, Odisha government.

Odisha chief minister, Naveen Patnaik was the chief guest at the event. Union minister for state for communications and information technology, Sachin Pilot was also present at the event.