J Satyanarayana recently took over as the secretary of the department of electronics and information technology (DeitY). His new role comes at a time when on the one hand the information technology (IT) industry is grappling with economic uncertainties, and on the other hand the government is framing a whole new set of policies to give a fillip to the sector. In an interview with FE’s Kirtika Suneja, he says that to meet these challenges, his priority would be to give an outcome orientation to the department by setting targets on the number of citizens being impacted by e-governance.

What are your focus areas for the department, especially the electronics sector?

The IT industry is coming out of the global recession and it is important to look inward and use technology in all strategic sectors like aerospace and atomic energy. This is also the thrust of the IT policy as part of which we want to make one person e-literate in every house by 2020. We are working on a non-profit-linked incentive scheme for the IT industry. On the electronics front, our objective is to have a turnover of $400 billion by 2020, involving an investment of $100 billion and employment of 28 million. The electronics policy will focus on semiconductor fabrication plants, modified special incentive package scheme, electronic manufacturing clusters, National Electronics Mission and an electronics development fund for the creation of intellectual property in electronics. For the department as a whole, we want action plans from the state governments reflecting the number of citizens benefiting from e-governance services.

What are these action plans and how will the impact be measured?

We have requested all the ministries to come out with their action plans by March 2013, committing the number of transactions per month that would be done electronically. We could be looking at 3-5 crore transactions per month per state. These transactions will be based on the e-district project which has a set of optional and mandatory services. All the states will also have to set targets and meet that number.

The mission mode projects (MMPs) of the National e-governance Plan have received a mixed response. How will they be revamped?

The central MMPs like the Passport Seva Project, MCA 21 and e-procurement have seen good traction, but state MMPs like land records and pensions have seen isolated success. This needs attention because state MMPs touch more people than the central ones, and hence their outcomes also need to be measured.

There have been concerns regarding regulation of social media and the department’s role in it ?.

There is always a debate between privacy and openness, and there’s misconception about the government’s role in censoring social media. The government doesn’t want to censor social media and it has no role in it. Censorship can be done by the intermediaries to resolve the dispute between the author and the aggrieved party. If the party continues to be aggrieved then they can move the court.