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Experts want India to create, control IT standards

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE: The secretary general of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Alan Bryden, expressed concern over the doubling of ISO 9001 certification pertaining to quality management.

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More than one million certifications have been given worldwide. From India, the total number doubled to 80,000 in 2006 from a year ago.

The certification should follow the legitimate route. “When certification is given without assessment, it becomes a concern for all other parties as it impacts the credibility of the certification system itself,” he said at a Round Table organized by the Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT).

He raised the same concern at an interactive meeting the Confederation of Indian Industry organized earlier last week in New Delhi.

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Besides the three dimensions Finance minister P. Chidambaram has earlier pointed out -- health, education and finance -- Bryden added setting up of international standards as the forth one for shifting of power to the developing nations.

He favored the BRIC, CIS and ASEAN countries to come forward for leading the standardization efforts in areas where they are trade dominant. “India has been elected to the ISO council and the country will start attending the council from January 2008,” Bryden said. China and Brazil have also been elected to the council.

Indispensable India
The speakers at the Round Table were unanimous in their opinion that India has to go a long way in setting up standards for IT and ITeS sectors. At the same time, they expressed confidence that the country has the potential to take the leadership position in setting standards for the IT and ITeS sectors.

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“Today, India has no single standardization for the IT sector,” said Rakesh Verma, additional director general of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), while initiating the discussion.

“The best security standards should come from India,” said Colonel (Retd) S.V. Ramachandran, regional director of NASSCOM. India has gone a step ahead and took necessary measures to ensure regulation. “India has become an indispensable part of any major global outsourcing strategy,” he added.

 
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Referring to trends such as the convergence of ICT, the blurring of boundaries between open source and licensed models, and the emergence of various business models, Ravi Venkatesan, chairman of Microsoft India, said wireless and graphic standards should emerge from India.

“And that is a sign of coming of age for India,” he said.

Stressing further on the need for setting up standards for IT and ITeS bases, Venkatesan opined, “it’s incumbent on the government and standard setting agencies to encourage interoperability.”

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Create and control
Prof. S. Sadagopan, director of III-T, Bangalore, asked, “Are we going to create and control standards?” Those who set standards will claim the leadership position.

He also urged the government to extend monetary aid to those attending standardization meetings. Further, he suggested that students should be made interested in standards.

Kris Gopalakrishnan, managing director of Infosys, opined that India is in a strong position to claim the leadership slot when it comes to standardization of IT. “We have worked with different generations of technology and we have the ability to understand the ambiguity and complexity involved.”

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“If you want to have a flourishing industry, we should have cost, scale, choice, interoperability and the ability to work with different generations of technologies,” he added. All these co-exist and India should see how it could make good use of it.

Gopalakrishnan also suggested raising the debate to another level to make it more relevant to the consumers. “The key driver for standardization is cost,” he explained.

Ashutosh Vaidya, chairman of MAIT and vice president, PC Division, Wipro Infotech, said India should think of setting standards to use information and knowledge for the benefit of the consumer segment, especially individuals in the rural areas “to ensure that he gets the right product and value for money.”

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Sayan Chatterjee, director general, BIS, Alka Sirohi, additional secretary, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Vinnie Mehta, executive director, MAIT also participated in the discussions.