How MCA-21 Digitised Corporate Governance

Quoted as one of the principal e-governance projects in the country, the MCA had begun to use electronic databases, thanks to the National Informatics Center, but it was piecemeal computerization and failed to address most issues. There was a need for a "holistic program with service delivery concept," says Malik. In 2002, the MCA, along with the Hyderabad-based National Institute of Smart Governance and a team of financial professionals and bureaucrats, began a year-long study of the process of regulatory filings. The study resulted in an exhaustive, four-volume compendium that laid out a roadmap for the MCA-21 program, and recommended far-reaching business process re-engineering, Malik says.

The NISG conducted the technological evaluation and picked Tata Consultancy Services to implement the project across the MCA's 40 field offices, four regional directorates and 20 Registrar of Companies. Under the agreement, TCS will run it on a BOOT - build, own, operate and transfer - basis before handing it to the ministry after six years. Tanmoy Chakrabarty, a vice president at TCS who oversaw the technological deployment and training, says the company took only 77 weeks to develop and implement the program in its entirety. This included digitization of about 45 million paper documents in MCA's archives, setting up a main data center in New Delhi and a disaster recovery center in Chennai. Apart from that, building the computing infrastructure, setting up 52 facilitation centres, designing the application software and setting up secure electronic payment gateways, were part of the list.

Today, from all across India and even abroad, people can access any filing by paying Rs 50 for a period of three hours. In fact, this has become such a popular feature that 225,000 people have availed the facility, and some have built a business around downloading, printing and selling some documents, Malik says. He added that on the basis of this single feature alone, investment on the MCA-21 project has yielded ROI because companies spent thousands of rupees on accessing the ministry's archives.

Malik has his own "agenda of optimization" for the program. He says the ministry has received a tremendous amount of feedback from users and will begin to implement a number of changes, notably to enhance the user interface. One of the bigger challenges, Malik says, is trying to resolve the issue of stamp papers - a pesky state subject outside the realm of the central government. Despite MCA-21's significant progress, companies need to submit documents requiring stamp duty to file scanned versions as also the physical ones. This, to Malik, is annoying and unacceptable in the overall scheme of things. Now that most documentation has been brought online, the MCA-21 program needs to concentrate on a range of things that will improve corporate governance, Malik says. This means the ministry should improve compliance management - be able to quickly swoop down on companies and bring them to book whenever necessary. That is probably when the full benefits of the MCA-21 program will be revealed.

The Person Behind It

Y.S. Malik

Joint secretary, MCA

Change management was a massive exercise, both for internal and external stakeholders.