DIGITAL INDIA PROJECT – OPPORTUNIES FOR IT CHANNELS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS

The Digital India project was launched by the Government of India in 2014, with a vision of preparing India for a knowledge future.  From creating telecom and Internet reach, to service the citizens, the massive plan outlay relates to a 5 year effort by the present Indian Government.   Ashok Subramaniam analyses some key areas as seen by some of the experts in the Indian IT industry.  

An initiative by the Government of India, Digital India Project (DIP) plans to integrate the government departments and the people of India for better overall growth. It aims at ensuring the government services are made available to citizens electronically by reducing paperwork. The initiative also includes plan to connect rural areas with high-speed internet networks via mobile and broadband. Digital India has three major components. These include creation of digital infrastructure, delivering services digitally and digital literacy.

First is the reach of Internet services through mobile and broadband.   Subburaman Subramanian, Chairman, Indian Institute of Material Management, Chennai, and who has worked in senior IT transformational roles in large IT organizations says that there is a greater than 1% jump in GDP for every 10 million additional users of the Internet.  “Imagine the hardware, software and the services that will go into creating such a large IT infrastructure – this will be such a massive scale up in such a short time, will be one of the few big projects of our lifetimes, says Subbu.

“This is a massive funding outlay,” says Suresh Krishnamoorthy, an IT consultant who has run System Integration businesses including software, hardware, Internet and Datacentre.

“After almost 10 years, there is a project where domestic IT investments from different streams will increase.  This is the direct benefit.  More Internet access means, more reach for everybody. This turns out to be a blessing in disguise.  E-commerce companies which are proliferating on an independent basis, which means that the opportunity for doing a transaction is multiplying.” Says Suresh.  Subbu elaborates, “With an increasing penetration of the net, instances of transactions on the Internet will surely increase, covering more areas of business.”

But, as Suresh points out, there could be still some challenges in this regard.   “Bandwidth and high availability of the Internet connection   will drive the success of E-commerce in rural areas, especially getting powered by Digital India Project.  Another issue is about availability of power.  Considering that the present power conditions in rural areas are not very dependable, we will factor in failed transactions and impact on customer faith on such online transactions, especially commercials.

Subbu adds “infrastructure is key for the overlying applications and services on the Internet.  This will be key to this ambitious plan.”  Santosh Satam, Founder and CEO of Securbay Services Pvt Ltd., a risk and threat advisory firm based in Mumbai, points out that when this happens, security will be an added concern.  Awareness of ways to manage security at the end user level will be key, and therefore while the opportunity is there, the vulnerability possess concern about data-theft, invasion of privacy, misuse of passwords. Couple this with loose laws on Data protection and privacy, this is a potentially a large scale threat which is, in a way, a huge opportunity.  The government and other agencies who manage these projects should go out of the way to address this concern, Santosh adds.

The third major opportunity is around Citizen Services.  Now addressed by Government, there are citizen services that can be started by online service agencies to facilitate, real action.  “Beyond that the Government itself will now push for key projects – this takes us to the second pillar of the Digital India Project, Suresh says.  This is all about serving the citizens digitally.  Already few projects have been achieved – you can pay electricity bills, raise complaints, pay taxes and access land records online.   Now we will be seeing the second wave of applications.”

Referring to the details on the Digital India Project website, Subbu states, “the key focus is on creating electronic databases for all citizen data, work flow automation within the government, integration of various services, platforms and identities, and implement business process re-engineering to improve transaction performance of existing services.   This will involve specific point projects, in turn invoking multiple points of employment.”  Suresh K adds, “The key factor here is that this provides business avenues for growth – either as direct bidders or secondary partners implementing a portion of the service, as contractors or consortium partners.  As per a report, the IT ministry has projected a job for about 50 million people through Digital India Project.”

Subbu adds a note of caution here –  “Now that is a large potential, and it will be natural that IT service providers and channel partners get aligned in terms of ascertaining them on the priorities for implementation of each of this micro projects.  This is key. A dedicated focus from the management, sales and marketing teams of the IT channel providers will be needed to explore this,” he says. Suresh adds, “A large portion of the funds for all central government projects are now shared with State Governments.  So, even if you are state or a local player, you can still take a share of your pie”.

Another strong area is that all the applications that were web-browser based will be now available on Smart phones.  “Smart Phones have changed the lives of people over the country.   People use various applications now as citizens.  The Government has rebranded them as e-Kranti Services.  Promoting Wi-Fi in schools and creating more online courses will push literacy higher.   Wi-fi and online education companies, especially software channel partner should see how this can be leveraged. “says Suresh.  With his own experience in promoting Cisco Network Labs in various education institutions, he says “this is a great opportunity to work as a consortium and address this – as education is a state subject.”

Subbu points out that the judiciary and the police automation have been pending for a long time. E-police and E-Courts projects will be of a large scale.  “While no further information is available on this count, the transformation of existing systems, under the Digital India Project is an imperative” he says.

Another major project, Subbu says is the thrust towards Goods and Services Tax.  Goods and Service Taxes presents a major revamp of all existing business software – Enterprise, SMB everybody will be affected.   This is very similar to the Y2K project that happened around the turn of this millennium.   Conversion of the tax structure and field implementation means that all software resellers and offering channel will have an opportunity to drive services and upgrade of the existing software because of GST.

The next few years will be exciting for the Indian ICT Industry, agree Suresh and Subbu.  In fact, the issue would be that supply may not able to match demand, which is a happy problem to have.  If most of the things go right, we are seeing a bright future for channels as they take the plunge into the ocean of Digital India project.