Govt mulls $10 bn spend on e-governance programme

The government plans to spend $10 billion on the national e-Governance program, a senior government official today said.

"The government has committed about $10 billion to this program, of which composite of some investment is coming from private partners and also from the State Governments," Ministry of Communication & Information Technology Additional Secretary S R Rao told reporters on the sidelines of CII conference here.

It is a $10 billion kitty currently but everyday more and more investments are coming in, he said.

"In this current financial year, it could be to the order of Rs 5,000-6,000 crore at the minimum but I think it would be as large as Rs 8,000 crore," Rao said.

In 2006, the government approved the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) comprising 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) and eight components.

"e-Governance will be promoted as a centralised initiative, to the extent necessary, to ensure citizen service orientation, to realise the objective of inter-operability of various e-Governance applications and to ensure optimal utilisation of ICT infrastructure/ resources," Rao said.