From Left to Right: N S Kalsi, ACS-Punjab; Karan Bajwa, MD, Microsoft Corporation (India); Sameer Kochhar, Chairman, Skoch Group; R S Sharma, Secretary, DeitY; Ari Sarker, Div. President-South Asia, MasterCard and Som P Satsangi, Vice-President, HP India at the 39th Skoch Summit in New Delhi.

"We should not make technology choices nor specify technology, rather specify services. It does not matter which technology powers up the services,” said Ram Sewak Sharma, Secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY). He said this while stressing that the ambitious Rs 113,000 crore Digital India plan will require a lot to be done and undone when it comes to making technology choices, its procurement and implementation across the government system. This emanates from an increasing realisation in the government that the time has come to focus on delivery of services and leave the choice of technology to the market forces. 

“At the same time we should not make silo solutions. These have to be interoperable based on open architecture and open standards. Even though it is proprietary, it should be in a position to work on open standards so that all the stakeholders could communicate with each other,” added Sharma. Since technology projects are linked to services, it should be free from interpretations. This necessitates creation of templates for all the departments and stakeholders to cut confusion, delays and added costs.  

In big government projects like income tax, passports and railways, the benefits are visible. Outside government, like banks and healthcare, a lot has been done, but these are all isolated examples. There is little understanding within the government on what technology does, available choices and how low the cost of leveraging this technology has become, pointed out R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM and former secretary to the Government of India. 

Digital India is not about technology, it is about service delivery. It has been observed that the government even lacks the capacity to take technology decisions, which are driven by ‘opinion’ rather than consultation. This is primarily because the technology frameworks are missing. The neutrality tone has to be set right at the top. In fact, the open source or proprietary battle Read More