No politics on IT glitches pls

Snagging Issue

-Infy has Sept 15 deadline to fix the gaps on I-T portal

- Panchjanya, a publication associated with the Sangh Parivar, had levelled various allegations against Infy

- Later, RSS distanced itself from the statement

-But it has already created reputational risk for Infosys

- It may prevent other IT cos to take up govt projects

There is a problem on the government side as it hurried up the project without the scopes being clearly defined. When such a big system is implemented, proper acceptance test has to be done. There may be a problem from the Infosys side also as it might have underestimated the project size or might not have deployed good resources. Nobody knows what exactly has transpired. What we hear is the government side only so far

-V Balakrishnan, chairman of Exfinity Venture Partners & former CFO, board member at Infosys

Bengaluru: Blaming Infosys alone for glitches in a national project like Income-tax (I-T) portal and politicizing the issue, creating reputational risk for the company will discourage Indian entrepreneurs to participate meaningfully in government projects in future. Industry veterans and entrepreneurs said a project like new Income-Tax portal should not have been implemented hurriedly and proper testing would have saved the day.

"Both sides have to be transparent about the issues concerning to Income-Tax portal. There is a problem on the government side as it hurried up the project without the scopes being clearly defined. When such a big system is implemented, proper acceptance test has to be done. I don't think the I-T department has done any of these things," said V Balakrishnan, chairman of Exfinity Venture Partners, and former chief financial officer and board member at Infosys.

"There may be a problem from the Infosys side, they might have underestimated the project size or might not have deployed good resources. Nobody knows what exactly has transpired. What we hear is the government side only so far," he added. The Finance Ministry has pulled up Infosys on several instances due to the ongoing glitches in the new Income-Tax portal. The company has been given the September 15 deadline to resolve the issues faced by the portal. Meanwhile, Panchjanya, a publication associated with the Sangh Parivar, had levelled various allegations on the company.

Though RSS has distanced itself from the piece, it has created reputational risk for Infosys.

"At the end of the day, you have to celebrate entrepreneurs in this country. Private sector entrepreneurs are going to create jobs in the country. If you make such lunatic statements and discourage entrepreneurs, it will not be good for the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country," said Balakrishnan.

Some other industry officials said that given the experience with working on the government projects, there will be a few takers for such work in future. "The government should partner with Indian IT firms to create a robust technology framework than putting all blame on a vendor. Given such experience of working with government project, there may not be many takers in the future," an industry expert said.

India currently contributes around five per cent of the revenues for most big IT services firms. While the share of the US in revenue contribution is more than 50 per cent, around 30 per cent comes from the European region.

"The demand environment is very robust. Given the revenue contribution from India, they will just ignore the government projects in future. Firstly, the project value is not much and it puts the company to face unnecessary criticism," the person added.

IT firms including Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have been implementing many government projects successfully including GST (Goods &Services Tax) portal, passport issuance among others.