Rising Kashmir News
Jammu, Feb 21: The state IT department Tuesday revealed a list of local IT companies that have been empanelled by the department to implement e-Governance projects.
The empanelment follows a four-month departmental screening and forms part of government’s effort to boost the budding IT sector in the state.
The empanelment is a win-win for both the state government and the IT sector. By mandating local IT companies to implement state-funded projects, the IT department will be able to speed up the implementation of e-Governance initiatives and at the same time boost employment in the IT sector of the state. The IT Department has recently accelerated the implementation of e-Governance projects. The State Data Center (SDC) has already been commissioned with the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) scheduled to be commissioned by spring this year.
The empanelment of local companies follows a concerted period of advocacy by the Information and Communications Technology Association of J&K (ICTA) to promote the local IT sector. As a result of this advocacy the state government has put in place another major policy decision which makes it mandatory for center-funded e-Governance projects like SWAN to include participation of local IT companies.
The policies are unique to the state of J&K only. No other state within India is known to have such promotional policies in place for their respective IT sectors.
The empanelled companies include Aman Technologies, Softnet, Wapmerr, Sanguine Infotech, iLocus, Charag Associates, Comtech, iKraft Software, Sanaatan Infotech, and Musky Software. The companies have been empanelled under four different categories: Consultancy, Software, Digitisation, and Networking. Eight out of the ten empanelled companies are members of ICTA.