Digital India Corporation to provide strategic support
Union Minister for Electronics and Telecommunication, Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday allayed fears about shrinking jobs market in the IT sector and categorically said not only his government but the Indian IT industry, led by NASSCOM, was also showing figures that suggest a clear uptrend.
He stated that ''Digital India'' campaign was a great success in India as it was empowering people, was inclusive in its nature and was ensuring much-needed change in the country through technological interventions.
On the eve of Modi Government's completion of three years in office, Prasad announced to form a Digital India Corporation (DIC) to bring in uniformity in the government's Digital India programme. “The idea is provide strategic support to ministries and various departments of the Central Government and state governments through this umbrella organisation”.
He also announced a new Software Procurement Policy to “address all variations, vagaries and uncertainties in government procurement so they may be avoided” and reiterated that the sector was showing a robust outlook in the last three years of Modi government. “The Digital India footprint was expanding day by day,” he said.
Reeling off figures of jobs created in the past three years and about the future outlook, he said in the financial year of 2017, the industry added 1.70 lakh new jobs and claimed that 2.50-3 million new jobs would be created by 2025. The IT industry had already added six lakh jobs in the last three years and the industry boasted of a total employee base of 3.9 million, Prasad informed, adding there was no downturn in the industry at all.
He said his government was quite in sync with the global developments in the IT sector and was taking along the Indian industry with it to help grow the sector rapidly.
NASSCOM, and IT majors like TCS, Wipro, Tech Mahindra and IBM had been demanding a smooth procurement policy for doing business with ease and it is the result of their consistent representation that a software procurement policy was unveiled today by the minister.
The policy is aimed at level playing field to all stakeholders by defining appropriate pre-qualification and technical evaluation criterion while aligning legal terms and conditions with the requirements of the IT industry.