“All Central Government Departments and Ministries will integrate their services with the Ebiz platform on priority by 31 December this year,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitly said today, while announcing the Union Budget.
The eBiz platform is a single portal for business and investment related clearances, with an integrated payment gateway, which includes processes such as issuance of PAN number, filing of returns, MSME Registration, registration for Excise and Service Tax, among others. When we had reported on the eBiz portal in January this year, it had 22 services, of which 8 were Central Government services.
Number of services reduced, doesn’t really work
It appears that since then, the number of services actually available online has reduced, and the portal doesn’t really work. In fact, the two services still available are just links to sites on DIPP.
We tried the wizard which helps you determine which documents you need when registering a company (in our case, an Internet company). Even the links mentioned there gave us errors. At the time of launch, it was indicated that this site was launched by Infosys for the Indian government. What a disaster.
It’s one thing to announce great plans. Quite another to execute it.
Founder @ MediaNama. TED Fellow. Asia21 Fellow @ Asia Society. Co-founder SaveTheInternet.in and Internet Freedom Foundation. Advisory board @ CyberBRICS
