A corporation to be set up for Digital India -Governance Now

A corporation to be set up for Digital India

India’s digital economy would be $1 trillion in the coming five to six years, said minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Pratap Vikram Singh | May 23, 2017 | New Delhi

#Digital India Corporation #Digital India #Ravi Shankar Prasad #MEITY #Ajay Kumar

The ministry of electronics and information technology (MEITY) will set up a new body, Digital India Corporation (DIC), to execute prime minister’s ambitious Digital India programme.

The corporation will subsume some of the existing agencies within the ministry including the National e-Governance Division (NEGD), a programme management unit set up within the ministry to oversee implementation of the National e-Governance Plan (NEGP) and Digital India programme.

"We will have private sector participation in the corporation. It will be professionally managed with corporate architecture," minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a press conference to highlight the ministry’s three years achievements. "We have also restructured Media Lab Asia," he said.

The DIC, a note issued by the ministry said, will provide leadership and support to the central government through MEITY, to steer and anchor Digital India and related policy and implementation initiatives. It will promote digital transaction including digital payments through various medium.

The corporation will provide support to the central and state ministries and other stakeholders in preparing “progressive e-governance” strategies, and promote accountability, efficiency, efficacy and transparency.

The IDC will “source and make available from both the market as well as within government, pool of specialized technically skilled manpower for hardware, software, networks, cyber security and laws, standards, quality and testing etc.”

To ensure autonomy and viability, the DIC will also collaborate and mobilise partnerships with the industry, to evolve revenue based models for service delivery, the note said.

According to Ajay Kumar, additional secretary, MEITY, the organisation will do project development work and also perform programme management for Digital India projects.

The minister said that the ministry will open up five more centres of STQC, the software testing and certification body within MEITY. He reiterated that the ministry will set up the proposed national cyber coordination centre (NCCC) by June.

He said that the ministry will set up separate computer emergency response teams (CERT) for the financial and power sectors.

Prasad also launched a model request for proposal (RFP) for software procurement within the government. In the past industry bodies including Nasscom and system integrators like TCS, Wipro, tech Mahindra, IBM have flagged the issue of absence of a model RFP to “guide all organisations across governments, so that all variations, vagaries and uncertainties may be avoided”.

Prasad said that the ministry has engaged McKinsey and Company to do a study for preparing a roadmap for the digital economy. He said that it in the coming five to six years India’s digital economy would be close to one trillion dollars. Here the digital economy includes communications, IT, electronics, digital payments and cyber security.

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