Executing Indian Govt ICT projects in India
Infosys NRN rightly said “Almost all govt. projects are executed in loss. The story is same for all other Tier 1 companies in India”
Over last five years I had personal experience in executing many large projects valued more than $2bn in Power, Utilities, eGov, Identity Management, eGov, Social Sector .
In my views Top five challenges from the vendor’s perspective are…
- Incomplete , inaccurate and unrealistic RFP , which nearly all vendors agree. Its comes with unrealistic timelines and ambiguous scope and SLA’s which all participating vendors are forced to agree. Argumentative vendors are disqualified.
- Ego of the govt. officers are major hindrances for most egov projects. The govt. officials feel they are expert and omniscient. This becomes a major hindrances in execution.
- Lack of decision making within ranks. For every complex decisions they form committees with unrelated members , which not only contributes to delay but also creates chaos.
- Very high payment cycle. Normally it takes enormous delayed cycle to make the payments and at times payment is put on hold. This creates huge cash flow problem . Some vendor leaves the project in between due to cash crunch.
- Delay in decision making and no accountability of the officers. Mostly they get transferred in between the projects.
While the project is delayed or remains incomplete, the vendor is always penalized but there are no instances where actions are taken against the govt officials for the failure.
More points are welcome … .