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Central Government, Connected Government, Policy

India’s IT chief calls for closer private sector ties

By Kelly Ng | 7 April 2010

Speaking to over 150 senior government officials at the FutureGov Forum India 2010 this morning, R. Chandrashekhar, Secretary IT, Ministry of Communications and Technology of India, revealed the growing opportunities of citizen service delivery through mobile phones and the need for closer Public Private Partnerships (PPP).

“Mobile has been more successful in reaching people in India than any other government service,” said Chandrashekhar. He identified the explosion of growth in the telecommunications sector as one of three opportunities for developing citizen service delivery in the country. India now has over 500 million mobile subscribers.

The high mobile penetration rate, said Chandrashekhar, is evidence that Indians are ready to interact with government through this new channel. While the government is already delivering some services – such as simple notification on the status of applications, and providing financial and agricultural consulting services – he believed India is still in the infancy stage when it comes to mobile government. “The biggest challenge is getting the mobile services ready. We need to share successful projects across agencies because civil servants learn best from other civil servants,” he noted.

The success of the telecom solution providers is a classic example of how the Indian government can continue to leverage its strong private sector, Chandrashekhar added. “India is a far more aggressive adopter of PPP than many other countries. The role of private sector will continue to increase. We want to put the onus of delivering the service on the private partner.”

He gave the example of the PPP project on passport applications: “The vendor manages the entire IT infrastructure, front-end facilitation desks, and so on, while the Ministry of External Affairs focuses on deciding whether the application of the passport should be approved. The ministry maintains control of data and pays the vendor based on measurable deliverables.”

Hardik Bhatt, Chief Information Officer, City of Chicago, USA, also speaking at the FutureGov Forum India, agreed that there is a need for governments to work closely with the private sector. “The private sector has developed technologies and services which the government can leverage instead of spending large amounts of money to create them from scratch. This will not only help governments deal with the challenge of rising costs but also meet the higher expectations of citizens,” he elaborated. “Citizens’ have come to expect the same level of service from their governments based on what they receive from businesses and consumer technologies.”

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