Kozhikode: The Kerala Government is all set to develop private software for coordinating the functioning of around 30,000 government offices and maintaining the data of around 9 lakh government servants.
The project, which had been put on the backburner during the time of the first Pinarayi Government (2016-21) due to stiff opposition from the employees' organisations, is now being revived.
On March 7, the IT Mission invited the tenders for the project, which is expected to cost Rs 125 crore from the State exchequer, close on the heels of the CPM State conference's decision to encourage private investment and entrepreneurship in the State.
The interested companies can give their tenders till March 28 for building "Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software", which is otherwise known as "Government-360 Degree."The move for developing private software came at a time when the National Informatic Centre-developed software programmes such e-Office and SPARK were in operation in the State.
Though there were talks about linking the existing software platforms with the newly launched one, no guidelines have been framed in this regard. It is suspected that the plan is to completely discard the NIC-developed programmes for promoting the new private software.
All the HR details of the government employees, including the details of their bank accounts, will have to be entered into the new software.
As per the plan, the selected private company has to develop the software within two years and then implement it for the next five years before handing it over to the IT Mission.
During the previous Pinarayi Government, the move was abandoned after the pro-Left employees' organisations stiffly opposed the move. The government had to backtrack from the project after various service organisations wrote a letter to the CPM State Secretary, protesting against the move. But this time, the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) gave permission to invite tenders for launching a new private software under the pretext of scaling up the security of the sensitive data, involving the government and its employees.
