e-governance spend to touch Rs 10,000 cr by 2009

New Delhi, Oct 15: India will spend Rs 10,000 crore on e-governance by 2009, according to Skoch Consultancy Services, which is conducting India's first ever-national e-governance census to be rolled out early next year.

The expected expenditure during the current year on e-governance stands at Rs 4,000 crore, a growth of 30 per cent from Rs 3,014 crore during 2005, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) think tank says.

India's e-governance market is estimated to jump 35 per cent during the next year which comes to Rs 5,400 crore.

According to Skoch, driving this growth will be projects like Common Services Centres of Department of Information Technology that attempt at reaching government services all over the country.

Skoch will cover projects from all the states to map the spread and impact of e-governance on the lives of common citizen. The census will cover quantitative data in terms of applications being used in every state and central government departments and also their usage in terms of transactions handled or hits.

These findings will further be clubbed with e-governance report card that assesses some of these projects on various qualitative parameters like ease of use, reduction in corruption, affordability of service and efficiency of staff, amongst others.

''India spends close to Rs 1,00,000 crore per annum on the social sector. A significant drive would be towards projects that attempt at better targeting this spending while plugging leakages,'' it says.

Other projects of national importance that can change things for village India include re-alignment of Department of Posts to provide banking and financial services upto the last mile, it adds.

''Computerisation of public distribution system (PDS) to the block level would be another driver.'' Major IT induction plans are underway at both Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC).

While the state-owned system integrator National Informatics Centre (NIC) has remained a majority player in the e-governance implementation space, private players like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have carved nearly 12 per cent market share for themselves followed by others.

Skoch, with a presence in 11 countries, is a strategy and management consultancy company working towards ICT led improvement of citizen delivery systems and for competitive advantage across segments like governance, banking, financial services, health, education and infrastructure.

UNI