TCS to digitise info for home ministry
Business Standard — June 4, 2007

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which has been partnering with the Gujarat government in e-governance since 2004, is set to digitise the working of the secretariat.

The company has entered into a unique project which seeks to establish a technology enabled platform for officials of the police force and home ministry to share and access critical information and records.

A joint team of officials from the ministry, the police force and TCS have begun working on the project which would see records and security information get real time access.

The team has begun forming a blueprint of attribute requirements for the police force and the home ministry for database management. The project is likely to start functioning by 2008.

TCS plans to develop a suite of applications that would store, process and secure data relating to crime records, files, orders issued, correspondence statements, employee records and other internal security documents. The applications would be developed on a high security platform accessible to only select users.

"The project to digitise security records under the purview of the home ministry and police force is probably one of the first in the country. Through the bouquet of applications designed by TCS in consultation with the secretariat, government officials at the highest level will have immediate access and inter-departmental communication interface to important data," said Tanmoy Chakrabarty, vice president and head, global government industry group, TCS.

The company's 2,200-seater facility at Gandhinagar which will see work in applications development, software, Information Technology and IT-enabled Services (ITeS) is set to start functioning in the next 18 months, he added.

This is in addition to the programmes the company conducts including a programme called Suryodaya which is a public-private partnership agreement with the Gujarat government to upgrade technology talent by imparting short-term programmes in hot technologies to about 3,000 engineering students across 34 colleges in the state.

The joint programme is being conducted by the departments of education, science and technology and TCS Suryodaya

In the last two and half years, TCS has worked with the Gujarat government in creating an Office Management System which has inter-departmental interface, a security system, document management system and database system for government departments along with applications for other government bodies like the erstwhile Gujarat Electricity Board (now GUVNL).

It has also developed digitised records for all primary hospitals and extended hospitals in the state.