Govt Approves National Policy on IT

8/22/2019 Govt Approves National Policy on IT

1/5

1

Government Approves National Policy on

Information Technology

DataQuest | Sep 2012

The Government of India has approved the National Policy on Information Technology 2012, to leverage

ICT to address nation's economic and development challenges. The policy envisages the growth of IT

market to US $300 bn and creation of additional 10 mn employments by 2020.

" . .. increase revenues of IT and ITES (Informat ion Technolog y Enabled Serv ices) Indu stry fro m

100 bi l l ion USD current ly to 300 bi l l ion USD by 2020 and expand exports from 69 bi l l ion USD

current ly to 200 bi l l ion USD by 2020,"it added.

Under the policy, government has plans to to create a pool of 10 million additional skilled manpower in

ICT.

The statement said that one of the thrust areas of the policy will be to enhance transparency,

accountability, efficiency, reliability and decentralization in government and in particular, in delivery of

public services by using ICT.

Under the policy, the government has plans to promote innovation and R&D in cutting edge technologies

and development of applications and solutions in areas like localization, location based services, mobile

value added services, cloud computing, social media, and utility models.

It will also provide fiscal benefits to SMEs and startups for adoption of IT in value creation, to make at

least one individual in every household e-literate, to provide for mandatory delivery of and affordableaccess to all public services in electronic mode, to enhance transparency, accountability, efficiency,

reliability, and decentralization in government and in particular, in delivery of public services, to leverage

ICT for key social sector initiatives like education, health, rural development, and financial services to

promote equity and quality.

The policy will be notified in the gazette shortly and detailed proposals for individual initiatives will be

formulated in consultation with the concerned ministries, the statement said.


2/5

2

5 key objectives of new NPIT 2012

The government recently announced the defined timeline and cost estimates for meeting the required

objectives of National Policy on Information Technology (NPIT) 2012 to be rolled out in December.

As the government gears up to meet the required deadline with key objectives all in place, the question

arises what to expect from this new IT policy?

We bring to you five key objectives of this new NPIT2012:

1. Push for Domestic Use

The government is looking to enhance domestic consumption of IT services to increase the size

of the industry. E-governance is one of the important aspects that will increase domestic use of

IT, said J Satyanarayana, secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology

(DeitY) to media.

The cabinet recently cleared the National Policy on Electronics 2012, which aims to make the

domestic electronic hardware manufacturing segment in to a $400 billion industry by 2020.

Under the policy, government has set objective 'to create an ecosystem for a globally competitive

ESDM (Electronic System and Design and Manufacturing) sector in the country to achieve a

turnover of about $400 billion by 2020 involving investment of about $100 billion and employment

to around 28 million people at various levels.

The policy has wide objectives, including increasing revenue of IT and IT-enabled services (ITES)

industry from $100 billion to $300 billion by 2020, expanding exports from $69 billion to $200

billion by 2020 and creating 10 million additional skilled manpower.

2. Enhance Cyber Security

There are around 30 schemes under various policies such as Cyber Security Policy and Social

Media Policy, which are soon expected to be approved by the Cabinet under the 12th Plan.

The government is looking at private-public-partnerships model in various projects including the

Cyber Security Policy, which are interested in working with the government.

Policy will promote indigenous development of suitable security techniques & technology through

frontier technology research, solution oriented research, proof of concept, pilot development, etc,and deployment of secure IT products/processes. The new IT policy will have a strong focus on

cyber security practices.

The policy also plans to create, establish and operate an Information Security Assurance

Framework'.


3/5

3

3. ICT and Social Focus

The policy very categorically highlights its objective of leveraging ICT for key social sector

initiatives like education, health, rural development and financial services to promote equity and

quality. The policy rightly mentions the objective of creating a pool of 10 million additional skilled

manpower in ICT and to make at least one individual in every household e-literate.

The government through this policy wants to encourage adoption of ICT in key economic and

strategic sectors to improve their competitiveness and productivity and moreover, provide fiscal

benefits to SMEs and startups for adoption of IT in value creation.

4. PPP in E-gov

The policy envisages to promote public-private-partnership in e-governance projects and facilitate

flow of private sector financial and technical capabilities into the national e-governance effort

especially in areas where viable investments are feasible.

The government through new IT policy plans to implement the National e-Governance Plan

(NeGP) and mandate provision of all government services through electronic mode within a fixed

time frame by enactment of the Electronic Delivery of Services (EDS) Bill and through

reengineering processes to enhance efficiencies of service delivery. The policy will also put a

mandate for public procurement through electronic mode across all departments and many more.

5. Social Media

The policy plans to design and create a citizen engagement framework for utilization of social

media by the government and its agencies. This is a positive and encouraging sign from thegovernment considering in past few months we saw conflicting views and opinions of the

governmrnt on the social media. Th policy plans to design and implement policy framework for

placing data in public domain for use and value addition as well.

Apart from this interestingly, DeitY, which announced recently that it would start a common (non-

emergency) telephone number 166' for the convenience of public to get information, said it is

planning to start it by this year-end.

This will enable people to get the latest information and status of their application in government

offices on services such as ration card and electricity connection.

At present the department is operating the five-digit phone number 51969' which is limited to

sending and receiving information through SMS only.

166 will have interactive voice response system helping people follow instructions being provided

through phone to access services quickly.


4/5

4

Rajiv Gauba joins DeitY as Additional Secretary

Rajiv Gauba, is new Additional Secretary at DeitY. RajivGauba belongs to the 1982 batch of the IAS of Jharkhand

Cadre.

He has more than 25 years of experience in Central andthe State Governments, at the District level and in themultilateral financial institutions.

He has worked earlier in the Ministry of Environment &Forests as Director in-charge of Policy & Law. He has alsoworked in the International Monetary Fund for four years.

Another new addition is Dr. Rajender Kumar as Joint Secretary with core function eGovernance andLanguage Computing.

Dr. Rajender Kumar, is masters in International economic development professional, public policy, ICTpolicy and e-Governance specialist with over 18 years of experience in the Indian Administrative Service(I.A.S.) in senior positions in public policy and administration at both state and federal levels.

His Specialties are Economic development policy and planning, information and communicationtechnologies and development, e-governance, urban and regional planning and development, publicpolicy and administration. He is Ph.D. in International Economic Development from MassachusettsInstitute of Technology.


5/5

5

Comments on the National Policy ofInformation Technology

Posted byPrasad Krishna

The NPIT 2011 has the laudable goal of making India a knowledge economy with a global role by

developing and deploying ICT solutions in all sectors to foster development within India and at a global

level.

The policy identifies several praiseworthy goals such as the promotion of open standards and open

technologies, accessibility for persons with disabilities, affordable ICT services, transparency,

accountability, technology development for Indian languages, placing data in public domain for use and

value addition, using social media to engage with citizens and investing in indigenous R&D and capacity

building. We deeply appreciate this initiative of the Department of Information Technology and offer below

brief comments to strengthen the draft.

Mission

It may be important to have one mission which is more citizen centric, for instance, to use ICT to

empower and mainstream underprivileged sections of the population such as persons with disabilities,

economically disadvantaged people, etc. All of the missions currently listed are related to making India an

IT hub and around economic/commercial indicators and the focus on the human development aspect

seems to be lacking.

Objectives

Objectives 8 and 9 which are dealing with government services could specifically mention accessibility.

While access for persons with disabilities is covered in objective 12, it does not imply inherent

accessibility of all government services, but merely an enablement of those which are required.

Enforcement Mechanism

While the policy has several commendable goals, there is little indication as to how it will be sought to be

implemented. It would be helpful to have clear mention of the responsible authorities and execution

mechanisms, including a mechanism for periodic review to ensure that all security, standards and quality

guidelines and timelines are met.

Development of Language Technologies

Since the development of language technologies is extremely crucial to ensure that ICT access is

possible for persons in both rural and urban areas, affordability should be stressed as a key aspect of this

research and open source solutions may come out of public funded research.
http://cis-india.org/author/praskrishnahttp://cis-india.org/author/praskrishnahttp://cis-india.org/author/praskrishnahttp://cis-india.org/author/praskrishna

Documents

Govt Approves National Policy on IT