New Delhi: A proposal for the creation of nearly 1,400 new posts at the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been pending approval since 2014, according to a report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology tabled this week. If approved, the move will help address the long-pending issues of resources and manpower at the Information and Technology arm of the government.
According to the standing committee report, NIC had also moved a separate proposal in 2022 for the creation of 212 new posts to meet the requirement of deploying technical manpower of the level of district informatics officer (DIO) and additional district informatics officer (ADIO), in newly created district centres in the states.
The proposal is yet to be approved.
Quoting a Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) response to the standing committee’s query on measures taken to address the issues of resources and manpower at NIC, the report stated, “The proposal for the creation of 1,407 new posts (subsequently reworked to 1,392) is pending approval since 2014″.
The manpower shortage becomes all the more important considering the fact that NIC plays a pivotal role in pushing the central government’s ambitious Digital India programme, as well as making the last-mile delivery of government services to the citizens a reality.
Asked about the current status of the 1,392 jobs, the report mentioned the ministry as saying in its submission that the proposal was approved by the electronics and IT minister “after due deliberations at all levels” and submitted to the ministry of finance for concurrence.
The Finance Ministry had returned the proposal after seeking clarifications on some points, which have now been examined by an internal committee. The proposal with detailed clarifications had been resubmitted to the Ministry of Finance through MeitY in February 2020, the report quoted the MeitY as saying.
“The Ministry of Finance has again made further observations and sought additional information. Necessary inputs are being compiled for resubmission,” MeitY informed the committee.
Additionally, NIC had also initiated a recruitment drive for 754 posts of the level of scientific and technical assistants through the recruiting agency National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology (NIELIT) in 2022-23 against the vacancies that arose owing to superannuation, voluntary retirement scheme, resignations and deaths, including anticipated vacancies till December 2023, the ministry said.
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Seeking data on sanctioned and actual strength
In its report tabled in parliament this week, the standing committee on communications and information technology headed by its chairperson Prataprao Jadhav, noted that, “given the significant role NIC plays as key I-T infrastructure provider for the central government, the Ministry of Electronics and Information and Technology (MeitY), under which NIC falls, should undertake a review of requirements at the centre with follow-up action on all pending recruitments in a time-bound manner”.
The committee also asked MeitY to furnish a detailed note containing year-wise data since 2014 regarding the sanctioned and the actual strength, the status of proposal for creation of new posts and the status of filling-up of the vacancies arising due to superannuation, VRS, resignations and deaths etc, and also apprise about the action taken.
According to the numbers shared in the report, NIC email users have increased to around 32 lakh in 2022-23 from 23 lakh in 2019-20. During the same period, its e-office user base has gone up to 8.75 lakh from 2.7 lakh.
Additionally, Sandes Instant Messaging App — an indigenous instant messaging app developed by NIC for secure communication among the government and its stakeholders — users have increased to 35 lakh in 2023-24 from 4,618 in 2019-20.
NIC facilitates institutional linkages with all the ministries/departments of the central government, 37 state governments/Union Territories, and about 741 district administrations of India.
The data centers of NIC host over 8,000 government websites and its National Cloud (Meghraj) hosts a number of critical applications on over 20,000 virtual servers supporting over 1,200 e-Governance projects/user departments.
The NIC has also been responsible for country-wide implementation of various e-Governance projects, including e-Courts, e-Transport, e-Hospital, e-Office, e-WayBill, Cooperative Core Banking Solution (CCBS), Immigration Visa Foreigners Registration & Tracking (IVFRT), National Scholarship Portal and eAuction India.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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