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Government
businesses have always been a part of the regular revenue stream
for IT training majors, but with the changing equations of today,
institutional (read government) projects have become a viable revenue
earner—from Central / state departments to PSUs, ministries
and the armed forces. The increasing efforts made by Central/ state
governments to implement computerisation in their operations and
the thrust towards e-governance initiatives has made the training
industry take a new look at this sector.
 “We
have created hubs to channelise our focus into this space and are
all geared up to meet the needs of this sector. This will increase
our revenues and offset the drop in the retail business,” admits
Sivakumar Ganesan, senior vice president, sales, SSI Education.
He adds, “The retail market has shrunk as compared to the past,
however it is a temporary phenomenon and we expect it to revive
and get stronger than what it was before.” The Enterprise Education
Division of SSI Education has a dedicated team working towards fulfilling
the IT training requirements in the government sector. It has been
addressing the specific training needs, providing customised training
for their skill force in both base and emerging technologies. The
course curriculum is developed by a KPMG certified ISO 9001 Content
Development Group to address different functional skill and learning
levels. The solution encompasses application specific, people specific,
content specific and site specific training across media.
The
Chennai-headquartered training house, which has a major presence
in Tamil Nadu, has been partnering with the state government to
deliver special high level training to backward class students.
More than 5,000 students will be trained across 100 centres, under
this ambitious computer literacy initiative launched to open employment
opportunities for young men and women at grassroot levels. Under
the ELCOT project, students of 64 government schools are being imparted
computer education as a part of their course curriculum. SSI is
also actively partnering in many institutional programmes, informs
Sivakumar Ganesan. Staff members of the Tamil Nadu Water Supply
and Drainage (TWAD) Board have been trained in base technologies
while correspondence students of Tamil Nadu Cooperative Union have
been taught MSOffice in Tamil. This apart, more than 425 unemployed
SC graduates are part of a year-long programme sponsored by the
Department of Social Welfare (DSW), Karnataka. This is also the
third consecutive year that the staff and children of the Andhra
Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) are being provided
with IT training. One of the major assignments is training programme
in the field of IT and application software for the staff of the
Income Tax Department all over India. The staff of Central Board
of Direct Taxes (CBDT) will also undergo training in 24 cities in
the country.
V
Balasubramanian, senior vice president & strategic business
head-global operations, Aptech, denies that their concentration
on the government sector has anything to do with the dismal market
conditions. “In the last few years, approximately 8 percent
to 10 percent of our revenues have been primarily covering government
businesses. During this time Aptech has imparted training to various
departments of the state governments and the armed forces. This
includes projects with the state governments for their education
focus.” A few of the major training initiatives include—the
three-year project for training of 65,000 undergraduate students
in 56 colleges in Rajasthan; ongoing programme of training secondary
school teachers and employees in Gujarat (4000 employees and 500
employees being trained every year); training employees of the Maharashtra
state government and staff members of the Delhi Department of Posts;
training of Army (EME, Signals, etc) and Air Force personnel; Karnataka
Backward Classes Development Corporation sponsored programme and
on-going training of 3,000 SC candidates in Uttar Pradesh, etc.
The organisation is also one of the four selected by the Karnataka
Government under its Yuva.com programme, which has been initiated
by chief minister, S M Krishna, to make people in the state computer
literate, in particular the underprivileged sections of society.
“We have the highest number of centres (90), which offer courses
ranging from Vidya to a six- month certificate course in programming.
The students pay 50 percent of the course fee and the government
pays the balance amount,” informs Balasubramanian. He adds
that approximately 2,000 Punjab government employees are also currently
attending computer education classes.
The
company is also participating in many ambitious e-governance initiatives
of the Andhra Pradesh government. These include e-Cops, that is
training police department personnel under the computerisation and
software development initiative. “The police department is
planning to train around 5,000 staff in the Home Department. So
far, we have trained 750 personnel in the basic and 60 members in
the high-end programme,” adds Balasubramanian. Further, having
understood the significance of HRD for good governance, the AP Government
is strongly focusing on this area and has assigned the task to Dr
MCR HRD Institute of Andhra Pradesh. Under the IT training related
initiatives of the HRD Institute, Aptech has so far trained 5,000
government employees.
During
the year 2001-2002 the SMART School pilot project was launched in
the state in which 23 government high schools were selected. The
same project is being extended to a thousand schools and will be
finalised very soon, according to Balasubramanian. They have also
trained 4,000 employees (operators, system administrators and officers)
of the Revenue Department, for the Multi Purpose Household Survey
(MPHS). The AP chief minister’s pet project, the MPHS has all
data related to the citizens (birth, nativity, caste, community,
et al). Tie-ups have also been formed with co-operative credit societies
for training their members and students. These societies provide
loans for pursuing courses at Aptech centres. “This has been
quite successful and other organisations are trying to emulate the
same programme,” points out Balasubramanian. Talks are also
on with other State Governments for partnering in their e-governance
initiatives. Many welfare programmes have been initiated for the
uplift of the socio-economic backward classes, which include imparting
computer education to SC, ST, BC and minority students.
Corporate
training being one of the major thrust areas for training majors
(and a very lucrative one at that), is evidently being targeted
in the government sector. “We have been training a number of
PSUs like the ONGC and public sector banks,” informs Balasubramanian.
STG International considers the PSUs are a major executive education
segment. The company has executed several turnkey projects, including
some recent ones for state electricity boards, banking and insurance
sector, power, petroleum, transport, defence and environment sectors.
“At STG the focus on the government sector has always been
there. However, in the current scenario the Government has emerged
as a major opportunity area for IT companies with most State Governments
having announced separate IT policies and unleashing a slew of e-governance
initiatives. This has resulted in the Government investing heavily
in computerisation and training. We are working on some proposals
with State Governments,” affirms Alka Kaul, vice president,
advertising and communications, STG International. She informs that
the short-term plans include bidding for tenders nationwide and
also focus on repeat trainings. The long-term plans for the company
includes empanelment with government bodies and to establish a close
relationship to partner State Governments in their e-governance
initiatives. To this STG will leverage on its network of over 300
centres across the country so that trainings can be imparted in
smaller cities and towns as well as the district level,” adds
Kaul.
Zee
Interactive Learning Systems (ZILS) has been partnering with the
governments of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala and
Punjab on several projects. These include the scholarship programme
just introduced by the Minority Commission SC/ST Corporation in
Andhra Pradesh. Yet another initiative is that introduced by the
Maharashtra Government under which computer laboratories were put
up in about 30 colleges and programmes were run for three months.
“We did not do the job because it was big or small but because
they have made a beginning and we should support them,” says
Dilip Mahapatra, chief executive officer, ZILS. The company is in
the process of establishing contacts and liaisoning with various
government authorities, so that when e-governance plans are fully
enforced, they will be there to partner in the process.
For
now while e-governance as a concept is still at a nascent stage,
it is liaison and renewed strategy time for most training houses
banking on an assured market in the country as most State Governments
have woken up to the need of computerisation.
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PEOPLE
