5 key objectives of new NPIT 2012

Recently, the governemnt announce the defined timeline and cost estimates for meeting the required objectives of National Policy on information technology (NPIT) 2012 to be rolledout in December.

As the governemnt gears up for meeting the required deadline with key objectives all in place to be announced; we bring to you five key highlights of what to expect from this new IT policy in december.

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 also cleared the National Policy on Electronics 2012, which aims to make the domestic electronic hardware manufacturing segment into a USD 400-billion industry by 2020.

Under the policy, government has set objective "to create an eco-system for a globally competitive ESDM (Electronic System and Design and Manufacturing) sector in the country to achieve a turnover of about USD 400 billion by 2020 involving investment of about USD 100 billion and employment to around 28 million people at various levels

The policy has 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 wll have a strong focus on cybersecurity practices.

The Policy also plans to create, establish and operate an ‘Information Security Assurance Framework.'

3. ICT and Social the foucs

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 pliicy rghtly 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 governemnt through this policy wants to encourage adoption of ICTs 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 Partnerships in e-Governance projects and facilitate

flow of private sector financial and technical capabilities into the national egovernance

effort especially in areas where viable investments are feasible.

The governemnt 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

Policy has mentioned 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 the governemnt 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 aswell.

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.