The IT department’s e-delivery

The e-delivery of the Taxpayer Services Project is an initiative of the Income Tax Department of the Ministry of Finance, and is one of the largest e-governance projects undertaken by the Government of India. The project is scheduled to be operational by December 2006.

The department has selected Oracle to drive the project across the country. It has chosen Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware as the platform to develop a single national database based on a three-tier mode architecture to increase efficiencies and improve citizen services. This was announced by V S Mathur, Director General (Systems) in the department.

To be completed by Oracle in two phases, the existing 36 regional databases will be consolidated into a single national database. All 745 income tax offices in 510 cities will be linked to this single national database. Oracle will also upgrade the department’s existing, custom-developed platform from a two-tier IT architecture to a three-tier mode architecture. This single consolidated database with a three-tier architecture will replace the department’s current client-server architecture.

The department’s single national database consolidation and e-delivery of taxpayer services project is one of the most important developments for Phase III of the national e-governance programme. Phase III includes the implementation of a National Computer Centre together with business continuity and disaster recovery solutions.

It also involves the setting up of recovery sites and an all-India virtual private network of all income tax offices, plus the migration of customised applications software to enable about 13,000 users to work on a single national database.

With its implementation of the Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware, the offices of the Income Tax Department will be connected to the National Data Centre on a common centralised database. This is expected to enable faster processing of returns and greater efficiency in collection, besides providing computing capacity to handle the projected workload up to 2010-11.

Speaking on the occasion, J G Pendse, Member, Investigation, Income Tax Department said, “We have taken a decisive step towards centralisation of IT services for improved process efficiencies. The e-governance initiative of our department is one of the largest such projects in the country, and will serve to highlight the benefits of e-governance. Once the project is operational, we will be able to improve our response time while creating a simpler and easier tax interface for citizens.”

The project involves deploying the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, Oracle Real Application Cluster, Oracle Partitioning Option, Oracle Diagnostic Tool, Oracle Tuning Pack, Oracle Internet Application Server Enterprise Edition and Oracle Internet Application Server Standard.