Infosys wins 10-year contract from govt

The country's second-largest software exporter, Infosys Technologies, has bagged a 10-year e-governance contract from the Ministry of Commerce to develop an e-business portal that will give businessmen easy access to government information.

In the first three years, the government would spend Rs 15 crore in the project. However, the total value of the contract was not disclosed.

"(At the end of 10th year) we expect this project to be expanded to cover the whole country and provide over 200 Government-to-Business services as well as other value added services by suitable private vendors," Commerce Minister Anand Sharma told reporters after launching the portal here.

E-governance is the latest business opportunity segment for Indian IT companies, who are facing slowdown on export front.

IT firm TCS had earlier bagged two big ticket e-governance projects -- online application portal of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and the online Passport project of the Ministry of External Affairs.

With the Unique Identification Authority of India project mooted by the Planning Commission coming up in a big way, IT companies are heading for big competition to bag e-governance contracts.

Under the contract, Infosys would design and develop the e-Biz platform and establish the support IT infrastructure for the next 10 years, company's Senior Vice-President and Head India Business Unit Binod H R said.

The project will be initially implemented in five states, including Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

The e-Biz project is among the 27 Central, State and Integrated Mission Mode Projects (MMP) under the National e-governance plan of the government.

Through the project, the government aims to create a customer-centric environment, providing the business community convenient and speedy access to information and services.

"This ‘single window’ approach will cater to the requirements of businesses for government-to-business services throughout the business life cycle, namely through the pre-establishment, commencement, operations, expansion and when required, closure stages of the business," Binod said.