|
MAJOR INITIATIVES IN AREAS OF E- GOVERNANCE,
LANGUAGE COMPUTING , INTERNET PENETRATION LAUNCHED LOW
COST PC'S UNVEILED REVIEW OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
ACT INITIATED
Indian Information Technology (IT) and IT enabled services
(ITES-BPO) during the year continue to chart remarkable
growth. The Indian software and services export is estimated
at Rs. 78,230 crore (US$ 17.2 billion) in 2004-05, as
compared to Rs. 58,240 crore (US $ 12.8 billion) in
2003-04, an increase of 34 per cent both in rupee terms
and dollar terms. This segment will continue to show
robust growth in future also. IT exports likely to grow
by 30-32% in dollar terms during 2005-06. The production
of the Indian electronics and IT industry is estimated
at Rs. 148,360 crore during 2004-05, as compared to
Rs. 118,290 crore during the year 2003-04, a growth
of 25.4%.
During the year, ITES-BPO sector industry continues
to grow from strength to strength, witnessing high levels
of activity - both onshore as well as offshore. As export
revenues from ITES-BPO grew from US $ 2.5 billion in
year 2002-03 to US $ 3.6 billion in years 2003-04 and
US $ 5.1 billion in the year 2004-05.
The ITES-BPO sector has become the biggest employment
generator amongst young college graduates with the number
of jobs almost doubling each year. The number of professionals
employed in India by IT and ITES sectors is estimated
at 1,045, 000 as of March 2005. The increased attractiveness
of India as an investment destination in IT has led
to the reversal of the brain drain - people of Indian
origin who went to pursue careers abroad are now attracted
to work in India.
Another significant milestone achieved during the year
was that Global IT & Telecom giants ( Microsoft,
Intel, AMD, Semindia, Cisco, Flextronics, Nokia, Alcatel,
Ericsson etc) have announced their investment plans
of more than 8 billion USA dollars in the country over
the next 3-5 years. These investments cover the entire
gamut of IT services (software, microprocessors and
networking equipment) and Telecom equipment manufacturing
. The whole exercise of making "India as Telecom
& IT equipment Manufacturing hub" started with
Shri Dayanidhi Maran's announcement immediately after
taking over Minister of Communications & IT in May
2004, of achieving a target of 250 million telephone
connections by the year 2007 and taking the tele-density
to about 22. And for the IT sector, he also announced
10 point agenda.
Major Initiatives in Information Technology Sector
during the year were:
1. National Plan on e-Governance
The National Common Minimum Programme adopted by the
Government accords high priority to improving the
quality of basic governance and in that context has
proposed to promote e-Governance on a massive scale
in areas of concern to the common man. A National
e-Governance Plan (NEGP) has accordingly been drawn
up covering 26 Mission Mode Projects and 8 support
components to be implemented at the Central, State
and Local Government Levels. India is aiming at achieving
the objective of :
"Making all Government services accessible to
the common man in his locality, throughout his life
through a One-stop-shop (integrated service delivery)
ensuring efficiency, transparency & reliability
and at affordable costs to meet the basic needs of
the common man"
For realizing this objective, Data Connectivity and
Services Delivery Access points need to be established
all over the country, including the remotest areas.
Government has already approved a scheme for the establishment
of State Wide Area Networks (SWANs) at a total outlay
of Rs.3,334 crore over a period of 5 years. These
SWANs will extend data connectivity of 2 Mega bits
per second upto the block level in State or Union
Territory in the country. The block level nodes in
turn, will have a provision to extend connectivity
further to the village level using contemporary wireless
technology. Under the scheme, proposals from 17 States/UTs
have already been sanctioned and first installment
of grant released to them.
Government is also formulating a proposal to establish
100,000 Common Services Centres that would extend
the reach of electronic services, both government
and private to the village level. Various government
departments have been advised to design and evolve
their Mission Mode Projects laying adequate emphasis
on Services and Service levels in respect of their
interface with citizens and businesses.
The Department has implemented "India Portal"
project through NIC which would facilitates single
window web based availability of Government information
and services at the National Level. The First version
of "India Portal" is now operational (and
can be visited at www. india.gov.in).
Government has also activated an Institutional mechanism
for evolving and enforcement of Standards for NEGP
(National e-Governance Plan). National Informatics
Centre (NIC) would steer the process of evolving standards,
Apex Committee (under the Chairmanship of Secretary,
DIT) would be approving standards and STQC would be
responsible for documentation, adoption and enforcement
of standards.
The Programme Management Unit set up by the Department
provides secretarial support to the Apex Committee
and other Line Ministries in evolving project proposals
for the execution of various Mission Mode Projects
and Components under the NeGP
The nature and scale of e-governance initiatives planned
in the domain of the State Governments would entail
major managerial and technological challenges. This
necessitates Capacity Building both at Programme level
and Project level in States. The Planning Commission
has allocated funds as Additional Central Assistance
(ACA) to all the States for taking up Capacity Building
measures as a first step towards NeGP.
For the benefit of various state governments and for
maintaining uniformity, Department of Information
Technology has formulated guidelines for Preparation
Detailed Proposal by the respective states for capacity
building. This also includes Suggested Institutional
framework and formation of State e-Governance Mission
Team (SeMT) attached to a suitable Department for
supporting the State Policy and decision makers for
taking up e-Governance Programme and projects in a
comprehensive manner. The Department jointly with
NISG held series of workshops to create awareness
for Capacity-Building requirements. States have been
advised to prepare Capacity Building Road Map and
detailed project proposal for Capacity Building for
the next 3 years.
2. National Electronics/IT Hardware Manufacturing
Policy
The Department has prepared a 'Conceptual Policy Framework
to promote growth of Electronics/IT Hardware Manufacturing
Industry' in consultation with the industry associations.
It addresses issues on - Tariff policy, EXIM policy,
Hardware Manufacturing Cluster Parks, supporting R&D,
marketing Made in India, inviting large Electronics
Manufacturing Service Companies to set-up Indian operations,
development of semiconductor industry, labour laws,
patenting, etc. The discussion paper on 'Conceptual
Policy Framework to promote growth of Electronics/IT
Hardware Manufacturing Industry' has been forwarded
to National Manufacturing Competitive Council (NMCC).
3. PC Penetration
The Department of Information Technology has identified
increase of PC penetration and internet utilization/coverage
in the country; and growth of domestic software market
as the thrust areas for action during next 2-3 years.
The Department has set up an Expert Committee with
members from the industry and Government to suggest
ways to increase PC penetration, Internet penetration
and growth of domestic software. The expert committee
has submitted the report on 26 April 2005. The Department
has set up six committees on Low Cost PC Manufacturing;
Education; e-Governance, IT for Rural and Social sectors;
Multilingual Software Applications and Contents; Internet
penetration; and Telemedicine to prepare Action Plan
in the respective sectors. The Department will put
in place a policy package in the next 3-4 months to
achieve these desirable objectives.
One of the objective of setting up of Expert Committee
on PC penetration was to make the price of computer
affordable. As a step in this direction, the Department
had discussions with various computer manufacturers
to roll out sub Rs. 10,000 fully loaded computer.
This major initiative would go a long way in increasing
PC penetration in the country. As a result of these
initiatives, two manufacturers namely, M/s HCL and
M/s Xenitis have launched their low cost PC at a price
below Rs. 10,000 during August 2005.
4. Indian Language Technology
The benefits of information technology can reach the
common man in India only when the digitized information
is available in all Indian languages. To enable wide
proliferation of ICT in Indian languages, tools, products
and resources should be freely available to the general
public. The Department has taken a major initiative
to make available tools & fonts in various Indian
Languages freely to the general public. The Department
has released in the public domain, various Tamil language
fonts, e-mail client, Optical Character Recognition
(OCR) software, spell checker and dictionary in April
2005. Similarly the Hindi and Telugu software tools
and fonts were released in June 2005 and October 2005,
respectively. Software tools and fonts in Punjabi
and Urdu are ready and will be released shortly. All
Indian languages are expected to be covered in the
next one year.
5. Internet Promotion
To proliferate .IN Domain Name, a new .IN Internet
domain name policy framework was formulated and implemented
by the Government in October 2004. The policy aimed
to remove the restrictions in the existing procedures
impeding a liberal, expeditious and market friendly
approach to register large number of .IN domain names.
In January,2005 the Ministry and National Internet
Exchange of India (NIXI) took the important step of
setting up of the state-of-the art, hardware and software
and re-launched the .IN Registry. The opening of the
.IN Registry has significantly improved and broaden
the availability of the domain names . The registration
of the .IN domains has reached 150,000 names by 7th
December, 2005
National Internet Exchange of India has been set up
to ensure that the Internet traffic which originates
within India and also has destination in India, remains
within the country, resulting in improved traffic
latency, reduced bandwidth cost and better security.
Four Internet Exchange Nodes have been set up and
operationalised at Noida (Delhi), Mumbai, Chennai
and Kolkata, and as many as 40 ISPs have been connected
with these nodes.
Setting up Root Servers :
The Department of Information Technology and National
Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) has installed three
mirror Internet root servers at Delhi, Mumbai and
Chennai. The root servers form a critical part of
the global Internet infrastructure. Delhi, Mumbai
and Chennai are having K, I and F root servers, respectively.
The installation of these root servers in the country
will help in reducing the expensive international
bandwidth load, increase the internet resilience by
bringing down our dependency on root servers abroad
and improve host name resolution from hundreds of
millisecond to under-ten millisecond.
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the next generation
protocol of Internet to which migration is to take
place from the currently used Internet Protocol version
4 (IPv4). IPv6 is essentially an upgrade to the data
networking protocol that powers the Internet. Keeping
in view the global trends in IPv6, the Department
of Information Technology took the initiative towards
IPv6 transition and a National Roadmap for IPv6 implementation.
It includes an awareness building programme, research
& development, test bed projects on IPv6 migration
and deployment by Network providers. In India, IPv6
has been deployed in the ERNET and Sify networks.
6. Information Security
Information Security is assuming vital importance
with the wide spread of IT applications in commercial,
strategic and other sectors in the country. The Standardization,
Testing & Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate
of the Department has established Information Security
Management System certification framework under which
a number of major IT industries and organizations
have been certified as per BS 7799 Standard. As part
of Indo-US Cyber Security Forum, STQC and National
Institute of Standard Technology (NIST), USA have
agreed to collaborate on development of Standards
& Guidelines on Information Security Management
and Control.
The Indian Computer Engineering Response Team (CERT-In)
has been set up to enhance the security of information
infrastructure in the country. CERT-In is in process
of entering into collaboration with industry, academia.
First security cooperation agreement has been signed
with Microsoft to facilitate exchange computer security
related information and training of technical personnel.
7. Review of Information Technology Act
An Expert Committee on Information Technology Act
was set up to review the IT Act and propose appropriate
amendments in the light of the national and international
developments post IT Act 2000. The Expert Committee
has submitted its report which also addresses provisions
related to data production, privacy in context of
BPO operations, liabilities of network service providers,
computer related offences, regulations for cyber cafes,
child pornography, etc. The report has been made public
and hosted on the Department's website in order to
seek opinion/feedback from the public. Based on the
recommendations of the Expert Committee on Information
Technology Act, the amendments to the IT Act have
been finalised and are being submitted to the Cabinet
for approval.
|
