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Five global information technology majors have joined to form a consortium along with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, to create a 'proof of concept centre' for electronic governance in India.

The five IT majors are Oracle, Compaq, Intel, SCO and Hewlett- Packard.

T O D A Y

• Electronic governance • Cellular weeding • Tata-IBM shifts focus • SGI's NT machines

The Internet computing and e-commerce framework that is expected to evolve over the coming year led by the consortium will address critical issues including financial, legal and infrastructure support.

Though there is yet no involvement from the customer, that is, the government, the partners are expected to leverage their existing relationships with government organisations to negotiate and collaborate with them to implement various e-governance initiatives as they emerge.

These would include implementing appropriate legal framework, encouraging rapid development of private and telecom networks, adopting the Internet computing model in its services and governance, and encouraging e-trade, particularly in business-to-business, business-to-government and government-to-citizen transactions.

The consortium has invited software and services companies to adopt the model and develop Web enabled applications such that they could be easy to deploy and be cost-effective to operate and manage, thereby reaching the benefit of IT to all sections of society.

Derek Williams, senior vice-president, Oracle Asia-Pacific Division, has been quoted as saying that there is a need for proactive government effort to enable e-governance.

These include increased spending on information technology in e-governance, widespread distribution of Internet through ISPs and e-commerce regulations.

- Compiled from the Indian media

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