Inside NIC: How the MeitY department maintains govt IT infra despite budget, personnel crunch

(Representative image)

It has been 46 years since the National Informatics Centre (NIC), a body under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) tasked with the upkeep of the information technology (IT) infrastructure of the government, was established.

Over the last few decades, the government body has been instrumental in adopting and providing information and communication technology (ICT) and e-Governance support to the Central Government. And in the last few years, the body has been working on key projects, such as government email services, issuing cybersecurity directions for government employees, and myriad other projects scattered across the hundreds and thousands of government bodies at both the Centre and in various States.

However, over the last few decades, NIC has seen a tectonic change in its role. Earlier, according to a senior government official, it was a core part of all things technical. It used to concentrate more on innovation and used to work with the industry in areas such as firmware development and so on.

However, since the turn of the new millennium, the government body has moved into working on applications development. And since the formation of MeitY in 2016, according to a senior official, the 'freedom of technical innovation is slowly dying'.

NIC has become a 'dumping ground' for management of industry-developed government projects, officials said.

The body, with around 3,000 employees, is also facing a major budget crunch. And with more than 1,000 people expected to retire in the coming years, NIC also does not have the required amount of personnel power, according to employees.

For this story, Moneycontrol reached out to over 1,200 employees of NIC, including its Director General, Rajesh Gera over email. Despite repeated attempts, Gera was not available for a comment on the article. The story will be updated when a response is received.

From monopoly to dumping ground

"NIC was sort of a monopoly," a senior government employee told Moneycontrol, explaining that it was the go-to body from 1976 (its inception) to the turn of the millennium for all things technology-related in the government.

The government body was responsible for maintaining the IT infrastructure of many critical services such as the Income Tax and passport departments.

The Income Tax portal is now maintained by Infosys, and passport, by TCS.

"We had a lot of initiatives, but we could not scale it up because of limited resources," said the official.

According to officials, the budget allocation for NIC is nowhere near what it requires. "The main issue is the funds crunch. The way it was supposed to expand, it did not expand," said another official.

The 2022-23 budget showed that the actual allocation in 2020-21 for NIC was Rs 1,308 crore, the revised estimate for the following year, 2021-2022 was Rs 1,400 crore, and the estimate for 2022-2023 was Rs 1,450 crore.

One senior NIC employee said that half of the budget goes towards payment of salaries for its 3,000-odd employees, and whatever remains is very little for innovation-related work.

"NIC actually requires 10x of whatever is being allocated now. Then you can expect service similar to that of the private sector," the official said.

Where are the people?

NIC has a staff strength of 3,000, but the number of people its work affects, runs into millions. The body not just looks after the IT infra of the Union government and its various ministries, but it also has district centres where it works on various e-governance projects.

"Earlier, there were around 450 districts. Now the number of districts has shot up to 766. We need around 10,000 people to just work at the district centres," said a government official.

The budget crunch at NIC also has a role to play in the personnel crunch at the government body. Government officials also say that the issue lies with not just the number of people being hired for the job, but also its quality.

"Earlier, NIC used to go to IITs for recruitment. Now there is a mass recruitment exam, where people often with less technical knowledge get hired," said an official.

This personnel crunch has also often forced NIC to look towards outsourcing as a solution. Currently, the ratio of government employees to outsourced employees stands at 1:10, one government official estimated.

The large number of outsourced employees also raise questions on NIC's aim of having strategic control over government projects.

Way forward

In June 2022, Rajesh Gera, who has over three decades of experience, was appointed the director general of NIC. Employees of NIC to whom Moneycontrol spoke, said that Gera has been trying to address the budget squeeze and personnel crunch through various means.

For increasing the number of personnel, employees said that NIC has been holding mass recruitments, and to counter the problem of budget crunch, public-private partnership (PPP) mode is being explored for various projects.

A senior official said that Gera is concentrating on developing more government products and platforms, and moving away from handling projects.

Moneycontrol has reached out to Gera with more queries on his vision for NIC, and how he plans to deal with the budget and personnel crunch at the government body. This story will be updated when a response is received from Gera.

Despite all the problems, NIC employees, both newbies and seniors, swear by the organisation, saying its work across various verticals of the government has positively impacted the lives of the common citizen. The direct benefit transfer (DBT), MGNREGA, and the work done during the COVID-19 pandemic were cited as examples.