BHUBANESWAR: Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office V Narayanasamy on Thursday said the country needs to invest heavily in the hardware sector to stay ahead in the information technology. “India will have to import hardware worth $ 400 billion in the next five years,” the Union Minister said at the 15th national conference on e-Governance Conference here.Although India has emerged a frontrunner in the software sector, it faces stiff competition from countries like China in hardware industry which needs to be given adequate support.“The country needs to invest heavily in the hardware sector to stay ahead of China in the e-Governance services,” said Narayanasamy, also in charge of Personnel Public Grievances and Pension.There is a perceived need for reforms to make public service delivery system faster and effective, he said adding that the state governments had been mandated to make a budgetary provision of three per cent to put a responsive e-Governance system in place. The Prime Minister has launched an ambitious programme to provide skill development training to 60 crore people in 10 years at a cost of ` 60,000 crore.As e-governance would play a significant role in ensuring transparency and efficiency in all spheres including education, the Centre has planned to create a database by collecting information from different departments and host them in public domain, he added.BROADBAND CONNECTION: In his opening address, Union Minister of State for Communications and IT, Sachin Pilot said the Government proposes to ensure broadband connection to 160 million households by 2020 to make the dream of e-governance a reality. The Centre has sanctioned ` 20,000 crore for laying optical fibre which would go a long way in giving an impetus to rapid growth in IT sector, he said. Stating that small and medium players have a big role in e-governance, Pilot said the drive for e-literacy must be given a push to make at least one person in every family e-literate. The Centre and state governments must work together to substantially enhance accessibility and availability of IT-enabled services.Attention should be paid to make e-governance affordable and the government should deliver services at the doorsteps in all six lakh villages of the country. He emphasised on development of software in all Indian languages. The private sector and lower bureaucracy should play a major role in making e-governance a reality instead of confining it to only seminars.Inaugurating the conference, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik emphasised on effective and people-friendly e-Governance strategies for providing solutions to governance problems. The Chief Minister said his Government has adopted several pro-active measures to give a boost to the IT sector. Chief Secretary BK Patnaik and IT Secretary PK Jena spoke.
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