Rapid strides in ITprocurement and e-Governance spearhead IT and ITes

MAIT has taken up the mandate to collaborate with various Ministries, Departments and agencies of the Government and to organize workshops and focus group discussions, wherein industry representatives can interact with government officials and deliberate upon various aspects of public procurement. One such initiative that MAIT has embarked upon is the series of regional workshops which are being currently organized in the country to spread awareness on Model RFPs that had been promulgated by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) in 2011.

As a part of these regional workshops, Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT) organized a workshop in Kolkata on Model RFPs in association with DeitY, and Accenture being the knowledge partner.  Policy experts, industry bodies and state IT decision- makers from eastern India gathered together to share their experiences on the implementation of e-governance projects.

Inaugurating the workshop, Shri Satish Chandra Tewary, Principal Secretary – IT&E, Government of West Bengal, said, “I would like to thank DIT, Government of India and MAIT for organizing this regional workshop and for creating the opportunity to deliberate upon the best usage of IT to transform e-governance through streamlining of procurement process.”  He announced that the Government of West Bengal intends to accelerate proliferation of IT and ITeS adoption in the state and has set up Hardware Parks and Electronics Manufacturing Clusters to expedite the same.

While addressing the gathering, Anwar Shirpurwala, Executive Director, MAIT, said, “We are honoured to offer such platform, wherein both industry and government can share their experience and issues on IT procurement and e-Governance. Through this workshop, we aim to create ways to accelerate awareness and adoption of Model RFPs.”

This was an important event for the State IT decision-makers from eastern India and industry captains as it served as a platform to interact on ways of strengthening IT procurement processes and highlight the issues being faced by them in implementing e-Governance projects over the last few years. Representatives from the states like West Bengal, Assam, Orissa and Sikkim, among others, participated in the discussion and addressed the issues and challenges for e-Governance projects.