Governments going electronic is regarded as the Internet's second wave of revolution and Tata Consultancy Services, Asia's largest Information Technology company, has already begun surfing it. Over the past few months it worked with 18 state governments and a dozen countries for their respective e-governance initiatives - the major ones being Mauritius, New Mexico and the UK and Charleston county (USA).

Major Indian states who form part of their clientele are West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir among others. This week they launched AP's portal www.aponline.gov.in. Interestingly TCS e-government services are branded as s-governance. "We decided on 's' as it would create interest after the dot com bust," the TCS head S-governance practice Mr V Chandrasekhar said.

Significantly they borrowed heavily from the country's e-governance pioneer Mr N Chandrababu Naidu, in stating 's' which stands for - SMART; simple, moral, accountable, responsible and transparent. TCS has bagged an order of digitising the entire administration of Charleston County in North Carolina. The outsourcing of the project is for five years. TCS is also working on establishing unemployment insurance systems in New Mexico.

"In Mauritius we are providing high-end consulting like what we are doing in AP regarding government and citizen services. The work involves G2C, government to citizen, and also G2B, government to business," 
Mr Chandrashekar said. He said they are involved with other countries but refused to name them due to conditions of confidentiality.

In January they signed a $50 million dollar agreement with Britain's United Utilities, the country's first multi-utility company that provides water, wastewater disposal, electricity, gas and telecommunications. TCS, in the three-year contract is required to provide general IT requirements, applications development and overall support and maintenance. Indian states by and large are asking for TCS's highly respected "SKIMS" product.