Old ways of working almost out of question: IT Secretary

The Information Technology industry may not get back to the old style of working from office, says Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary Ministry of Electronics and IT (Meity). He pointed out that the IT industry showed resilience during the lockdown period, with up to 97 per cent of its workforce working from home or anywhere.

On Thursday, the government had announced simplified guidelines for BPOs and ITES companies to reduce the compliance burden on them, and to facilitate ‘Work From Home’ and ‘Work From Anywhere’ Framework. It seeks to create a friendly regime for Work From Home and Work From Anywhere, while removing frequent reporting obligations for companies.

“We are very excited at what happened at that point of time – during lockdown. Now it is a fact, I can’t imagine going back to the old way of working and I am told by the industry as well, going back to old ways of working is almost out of question,” the secretary said. “Before lockdown, at least half of my work was on physical files. It took us less than 48 hours to switch over seamlessly into a system where 100 per cent of our work was digital.” Sawhney said they started working from home and making use of video conferencing solutions. He highlighted that the services being provided with the help of data centers helped everyone to work from outside office without any disruption.

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Sanjay Dhotre, the Minister of State for Electronics and IT, acknowledged Digital India as a transformational mission of the government. He said modern technologies have unprecedently expanded the horizons of the public services in all sectors of India’s economy. “Today digital platforms, remote working, online education and other such intervention are no more an option but necessity after COVID-19,” Dhotre.