Big Four among consulting firms enlisted to support e-governance implementation

The State Government of Maharashtra has appointed a consortium of consulting firms to assist with developing its e-governance capabilities. The group includes all of the Big Four – Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC – as well as professional services firm Grant Thornton and IT services giant Wipro.

In addition to efforts across the private sector to implement digital transformations, the public sector appears to be hopping on the digital bandwagon. The Central Government, in addition to state governments across the country, has been contending with sweeping changes in recent years.

The repercussions from demonetisation have only just subsided, while a number of government agencies are still adapting to the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) that came into effect early last year. Now that the dust has settled, government bodies are looking for areas of improvement.

850 million people are predicted to have digital connections by 2025, and the government hopes to be prepared for this digitalised population, primarily through the development of a comprehensive e-governance infrastructure that can enable a number of processes in the online domain.

The western state of Maharashtra has made a significant step towards this goal, appointing some of the most high profile accounting and advisory firms across the country to help with its e-governance capacity. The Maharashtra government’s primary e-governance initiative is its RojgarWahini programme.

RojgarWahini is an online portal to facilitate employment and self-employment opportunities, primarily through the provision of training and advisory services for entrepreneurs, in addition to job opportunities. All the involved consulting firms are enlisted up until 2023, and will be assessed based on performance indicators.

“The empanelled firms will have to clearly define the milestones in their proposal for the project and clearly devise the measurable outcomes. The selected agency will be required to provide monthly status reports to the department on the performance of work,” said an official from the State Government.

“'It will be binding on the project manager of the selected agency to monthly brief DIT about the progress and status of the project so that best use of existing infrastructure and inputs could be made in the interest of the project,” he added.