Should Tcs, Infosys, Wipro Execute Core Govt Schemes?

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 Jawahar- lal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mis- sion, said additional secretary, ministry of communicationsandIT,SRRao.

"The Mission Mode project for police would be a crime and criminal tracking system by the ministry of home affairs. It couldworthRs2,500crore.Theministryof agriculture plans to do pilot projects of around Rs 200 crore to get an understand- ingof therequirementsinsixstates.Some parts of the JNNURM initiative which is worth Rs 5,000 crore could also see bids be- ing invited for citizen-centric services," Rao said on the sidelines of the Bank- ingTechconferenceinMumbai.

Rao refused to give further clarity on the projects, as respective ministries and tategovernmentswoulddecidethese.

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 li- cence 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 areintegrated.

For the $50-billion Indian software ex- port 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 op- portunities. The government has awarded contracts for five MMPs so far which in- clude income tax CPC project and the eBiz portalproject,bothbaggedbyInfosys.TCS hastheministryof corporateaffairs'MCA 21 and the ministry of defence's Passport Seva project. Wipro is working on the Cen- tral 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.