Nasscom drafts IT policy for Uttaranchal

NEW DELHI: There is no doubt that information technology has caught the

imagination of Indian politicians. Even before the nitty-gritty of

administration is put into place, the newly-formed Uttaranchal and the Jharkhand

governments have asked Nasscom president Dewang Mehta to frame IT policies for

the states. While the Jharkhand policy will be announced by January, the

Uttaranchal IT policy will be announced shortly in the first week of December.

Mehta, however, declined to divulge details of the policy saying "it is the

prerogative of the Chief Minister" and that it would be "announced

soon".

In a recent press conference, Mehta had mentioned that its slogan for IT for

the masses would revolve round the three sub projects of e-health, e-employment

and e-education. The policy initiatives of Uttaranchal are expected to be in

line with these. It is understood that some of the initiatives of the IT policy

of Uttaranchal include developing Dehradun as an IT-enabled center, setting up

of an IIIT in the state and focusing on tele-medicine to usher in development.

Dehradun is poised to emerge as a hub of IT activities in the newly-formed

state considering the existence of an earth station in the city, a large number

of educational institutes and its large pool of educated population. The state

is expected to seriously look at tele-medicine to bring healthcare to the rural

interiors, especially in the remote areas of Tehri and Garhwal. The range of

IT-enabled services could range from setting up grameen centers, which are

simple data processing centers where existing data are converted into digital

form, to complex activities as offshore call centers to support remote

customers.

Speaking about the UP government's e-governance initiative, Mehta says,

"The UP government has recently implemented some successful grameen

projects whereby local employment was created by setting up data processing

centers to digitize government documents." With the initiative, the

government achieved two goals in one stroke: it created local employment as well

as enabled e-governance.

Nasscom has been playing a pioneering role in the development of policy

initiatives in the country and has been spearheading the causes of the IT

industry on various platforms. The latest issues that has been raised by Nasscom

pertain to the lack of physical and telecom infrastructure in the country, the

need to increase the quality and the quantity of software professionals in the

country, and the need for investment in developing original technologies.