Mohandas Pai bats for Chief Information Officer under PMO

Former Infosys CFO and investor T V Mohandas Pai on Tuesday said India needs a Chief Information Officer (CIO) under PMO for integrating IT strategies and policies related to various departments.

"I totally agree (that India should have a CIO under Prime Minister's Office.) The government needs this to create a tech vision for itself," Pai told PTI here.

This will help integrate IT strategies and policies related to various departments, he said.

Pai's reply came when he was asked about Centre's plans to create a position of CIO, which was reported in some sections of the media.

India also needs a Chief Data Scientist to enable use of big data, Pai added.

In the light of a large part of financial transactions and technology backend in India likely to be inter-linked with Aadhaar number, the role of CIO becomes all the more important, he noted.

The government plans to interlink financial transactions and technology backend with Aadhaar number by next financial year.

The role of CIO will be reportedly similar to that of a White House CIO, who is also responsible for designing an inter-operable IT infrastructure of central government.

The White House CIO is also reportedly responsible for managing the IT spending of the federal government.

IT experts feel CIO could push for open source procurement of software which could lead to more efficient spending of taxpayers' money on IT spending by the central government.