C-DAC: Press Kit - Press Releases - C-DAC's eGovernance expertise identified as an area of cooperation between India & Italy

In the bilateral talks today between the official delegation led by Shri. Pramod Mahajan, Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology from India to Italy and his counterpart Italian Minister for Innovation and Technology, Mr. Lucio Stanca and his official colleagues, eGovernance was identified as one of the areas of cooperation.

Earlier in the day Shri. Mahajan inaugurated the SMAU 2002 International ICT Exhibition and the India Pavilion. Speaking at the inaugural function, Shri. Mahajan highlighted the accomplishments of ICT industry in India, which is globally the fastest moving industry, and stressed on cooperation, sharing of knowledge and experience to develop a win-win scenario. India offered exciting opportunities due to its vast market and large pool of ICT skilled manpower.

Shri. R.K. Arora, Executive Director, C-DAC, who is currently in Italy as a member of the Indian delegation during the bilateral talks presented the work C-DAC has carried out in eGovernance, specifically in G2C involving Public Private Partnership (PPP) in the area of Stamps Registration in two States in India.

The Stamps Registration software developed by C-DAC involves BOT model wherein the Government investment is limited to sponsoring development. Private entrepreneurs had invested in capital at the sub-registrar offices across the States, managed the registration operation offering an efficient service of registering a stamped document in less than 25 minutes using the software developed by C-DAC. The Government and private entrepreneurs shared the revenue on per stamp document registered in a given proportion, and the citizens as users received quality service without the hassles involved in the earlier manual system.

During the discussion, use of Open Source Softwares in eGovernance applications was also emphasized by the Italian Minister. Shri. Arora informed the delegation that Linux open source software is receiving popularity in India, and is also being used in some of the C-DAC developed applications. Shri. Pankaj Agarwala, Joint Secretary, Department of Information Technology, and a member of the Indian delegation made a presentation on initiatives taken in the Government by Department of Information Technology in the areas of eGovernance, eCommerce and Community Information Centres (CIC) in the North-Eastern States of India.