The central and state governments are expected to call bids for three major IT projects this year. These are the home ministry?s police mission mode, the agriculture ministry?s pilot projects and the ones under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, said additional secretary, ministry of communications and IT, SR Rao.
?The Mission Mode project for police would be a crime and criminal tracking system by the ministry of home affairs. It could worth Rs 2,500 crore. The ministry of agriculture plans to do pilot projects of around Rs 200 crore to get an understanding of the requirements in six states. Some parts of the JNNURM initiative which is worth Rs 5,000 crore could also see bids being invited for citizen-centric services,? Rao said on the sidelines of the BankingTech conference in Mumbai.
Rao refused to give further clarity on the projects, as respective ministries and state governments would decide these.
Under the Rs 23,000-crore National e-governance Plan (NeGP), the ministry has laid out 27 mission mode projects (MMP) which include complex ones like automating land records, tax, driving licence and passport among others, along with the mandate of setting up 1,00,000 common service centres (CSC), a number which has been recently escalated to 2.5 lakh. Out of the 27 MMPs, nine are central, eleven belong to states and seven are integrated.
For the $50-billion Indian software export industry, the various e-governance projects are big opportunities. Nasscom has projected the business opportunity in e-governance over next three years is worth $9 billion. In fact, the top IT vendors like TCS, Infosys and Wipro have already set up dedicated India units to tap these opportunities. The government has awarded contracts for five MMPs so far which include income tax CPC project and the eBiz portal project, both bagged by Infosys. TCS has the ministry of corporate affairs? MCA 21 and the ministry of defence?s Passport Seva project. Wipro is working on the Central Board of Excise & Customs projects. The biggest mission mode project so far is the one related to unique identification number, being spearheaded by former Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani.