E governance projects are painful, say corporates

IT companies that won e-governance projects say many of these projects are bleeding. They have trouble collecting payments from governments. And there is a huge disconnect between the corporates and the bureaucracy, with both finding it difficult to understand the other's style of working, leading to inordinate delays. 



Harsh Chitale, CEO of HCL Infosystems, noted that payments for e-governance projects came only at the completion of a project, and it was never very clear when a project was deemed to have been completed. "So there are huge delays in payments. The industry may soon find it difficult to attract implementation guys and systems integrators for government projects because of these delays," said Chitale, who was speaking at a session on challenges in scaling e-governance initiatives at the Bangalore IT.biz here on Wednesday. 

The e-governance head of another company, who did not want to be identified, said, "Winning a government contract is seen to be prestigious for a company, but government jobs are extremely painful . We have to cross several hurdles, including delays in payment." 

Many participants felt that it was critical for the central government to mandate states to have simple, flexible RFPs, bidding procedures and payment terms. Some said projects also should be simplified , and made more userfriendly to citizens. Currently, some 40% to 80% of the activities around a project are seen to go waste. 

Karnataka chief secretary SV Ranganath said the central government should help state governments with regard to successful deployment of e-governance projects. The questions to be asked are: have you been able to reduce corruption, and are citizens able to get services cheaper, better and faster. 

"It is critical that all governments simplify their e-governance projects to make them successful. Only then will projects, like say telemedicine, distance education, etc, benefit the needy,'' Ranganath said. 

Rajeev Chawla, father of the Bhoomi land records project in Karnataka, said all RFPs should be drafted to ensure optimum benefit to citizens . In many cases RFPs are seen to be complex and rigid, which impacts the success of projects. Chitale of HCL also noted that a lot of effort was required "to change a coma from here to there in an RFP (request for proposal)". 

Some noted that citizens were finding it difficult to use online services like e-income tax filing, e-seva passport, and the land records. 

E-governance projects like R-APDRP, a project aimed at reducing power losses by application ofIT-driven automation, ePDS, a food & public distribution project, e-procurement , are said to be facing payment delays. Corporates are also not able to realize value from kiosk-based citizencentric projects (such as Nemmadi ) as only a small number of citizens reach out to such kiosks. 

Under the National e-Governance Plan, the central government has a budget of $10 billion for e-governance initiatives. IT companies see this as a massive opportunity for them.