For the Digital India initiative to succeed, industry members believe there is a need to have a CEO who can be the point of contact between them and bureaucrats.

Some multinational companies have written to Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of IT and Communications, pointing out the need to set up a ‘Digital India Programme Office’, which will oversee the vision laid out by the PM.

Operating in silos

“One of the key execution challenges we are facing is the fragmented ownership and accountability across government departments, which slows down our ability to execute and scale initiatives,” said the South Asia head of a leading MNC, who did not wish to be named.

“The state and central governments need CIO positions to take care of various systems developed and maintained by the various governments,” added Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan.

Industry cites the Aadhaar initiative, where Nandan Nilekani was the single point of contact, and this resulted is the department issuing 82 crore cards.

“Industry players and society need to leverage the digital infrastructure to create more opportunities and economic value,” opined KK Raman, Partner, KPMG in India.

Others, however, believe there is no need to create a central point of contact as the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has the structure in place to kick off the Digital India project.

“The structure is in place and people have to remember that it is not a six-month project but could take 6 years as it is much larger in scope compared to Aadhaar,” said Anwar Shirpurwala, Executive Director, MAIT.

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