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Mr Kiran Karnik, President, Nasscom (left), with Mr Arun Kumar, Chairman, addressing a press conference in the Capital on Thursday.

NEW DELHI, Jan. 16

THE unwillingness of governments to commit funding, the absence of a clear revenue stream for private sector and inappropriate tendering processes are hampering the growth of e-governance in the country, the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) has said.

Though the e-governance market grew by 18 per cent in 2001-02 to touch Rs 1,400 crore and is currently the highest growing segment in the domestic IT market, several `operational, economic, personnel, planning and implementation issues' stall progress in the area, Nasscom said after releasing the findings of its e-governance study.

According to Mr Kiran Karnik, President of Nasscom, despite earmarking three per cent of their budget on IT spending, state governments are still unwilling to commit funding for e-governance projects and there is no clarity on how the private sector can earn revenue from rendering e-services to citizens.

"It is also a cause of concern that current focus of e-government projects is unfortunately on hardware spend rather than on process re-engineering and software services. About 60 per cent of the Government IT spending in now on hardware, 25 per cent on package software and only 15 per cent in software services," Mr Karnik said here at a press conference.

He said that it is imperative for the governments to change the existing processes and practices before computerising them.

"Now existing processes are getting computerised. It never works."

In order to expedite the progress of e-governance in the country, Nasscom has suggested that States should undertake process mapping and re-engineering, identify people who can function like Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in each state, rewrite tendering and bid evaluation procedures and build trust between the industry and the bureaucracy.

The three per cent budget on e-governance should be clearly committed and a ratio of 40:30:30 on hardware, software and services should be maintained, Nasscom said.

"By the end of 2003, IT training must be made mandatory to all Class 1 government officers and the tendering and bid evaluation processes should be rewritten", Mr Karnik said, adding that by end of 2004, all States should build state-wide area networks.

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