The report of a high-level committee, chaired by Infosys co-founder S Gopalakrishnan, has pitched for more public-private partnership (PPP) models to carry out various projects under the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

There is a critical shortage of manpower at NIC as its human resource strength has remained more or less stagnant in spite of increasing workload, said the report, adding that deeper public-private engagement and training officials on latest technologies can help NIC transform its operations to play a bigger role in ‘Digital India’ initiatives.

“The Committee has recommended setting up an advisory committee, to be headed by Department of Electronics and IT Secretary with participation from academia, industry, research institutes and DG NIC and senior members from the organisations,” Gopalakrishnan told reporters here on Monday. The report said IT infrastructure within NIC district centres, State centres and national centres need to be extended to the block level.

Since most users are concerned with routine IT services and infrastructure, outsourcing these instead of hiring manpower should improve services. Software development may be outsourced with the strategic control rested with NIC, the report said

“NIC is a very important part of the connectivity platform, which has a footprint across all villages in India. They do good work. But, with changing times and challenges, they need to play a bigger role. NIC will play a huge role in India’s transformation,” Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communications and IT Minister, said.

The Committee has submitted its report and the recommendations made will be looked into with priority, he added.

Some of the major e-Governance initiatives supported by NIC include eCourts, eHospital, eDistrict, Land Records, ePanchayat and India Portal, among others.

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