New Delhi, October 8 2011: The Draft National Policy on Information Technology, for India, has been released. It moots a three fold increase in revenue from IT and IT-enabled services from $ 88 billion today to $ 300 billion by 2020 and suggests that India could be a global hub for language technology.
Releasing the draft, Kapil Sibal, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology underlined the significant contribution of the IT Sector to the growth of Indian economy over last decade which registered a growth rate of 8 per cent, with 80 per cent of the revenues of thr IT industry coming from exports. The Policy proposes to encourage growth of indigenous demands and market while formulating fiscal and other incentives to attract investment in this sector in Tier II and Tier III cities. The Indian IT and ITES sector currently employs over 2.5 million skilled people and has been one of the major employment generators in the last two decades.
Other thrust areas in the draft policy:
Promote innovation and R&D in cutting edge technologies and development of applications and solutions in areas like localization, location based services, mobile value added services, Cloud Computing, Social Media and Utility models.
Fiscal benefits to SMEs and startups in the key industrial sectors for adoption of IT in value creation
Leverage Internet, Web and mobile technologies for developing new products, technologies and businesses.
Integration of Internet based and mobile based delivery of services onto a common platform to enable seamless, ubiquitous, secure and personalized delivery of government and non-government services throughout the country
Integration of Aadhaar the unique ID, financial and location-based services into this integrated platform to foster an ecosystem for innovation in services
Creating a pool of 10 million additional skilled manpower in ICT.
Making at least one individual in every household e-literate.
Extend the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) and mandate provision of all Government services through Electronic mode within a fixed time frame by enactment of the Electronic Delivery of Services (EDS) Bill
Make India global hub for development of language technologies to encourage and facilitate development of content accessible in all Indian languages and thereby help bridge the digital divide.
Enable access of content and ICT applications by differently abled people to foster inclusive development.
Strengthen the Regulatory and Security Framework for ensuring a Secure Cyberspace ecosystem.
The draft Policy can be found here: http://www.mit.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/National_Policy_on_Information_Technology_07102011(1).pdf
Comments and feedback on the draft Policy are invited by Department of Information Technology have been invited: http://www.mit.gov.in/content/public-consultation-2011 Oct 8 2011