New Income Tax portal misses India's IT excellence

The reputation of India’s famed IT industry is at stake. Glitches in the new income tax portal pose a few uncomfortable questions. Those serving the backend would defend these glitches as teething trouble. It’s a prime citizen engagement project. The vendor and vendee should  have put their best foot forward. The income tax site needs be to fully functional without any further delay. Home-bred IT majors, who we celebrate with pride, should display quality standards with consistency without discriminating between a Union government contract and a global client.

The citizen has witnessed fruits of IT leadership with revolutionary transformation in the issuance of passports. Similarly, GST backend, after initial hiccups, has now well stabilised marking a success story in executing a major economic policy reform.

The private sector has been undertaking government software projects successfully for several decades now, starting with the computerisation of the Railway ticket booking system in 1980s. The CoWin platform, where crores of people have registered to get vaccinated for Covid-19, is another successful template.

But the new income tax portal challenge has attracted more attention as it deals with taxes and several businesses are said to have been affected by the non-functioning of the site. There have been complaints of certain forms not getting uploaded thereby halting remittances. Even a simple thing as a change in password to log in could not be undertaken for almost five days.

It is time to quickly get the portal off the ground. Remember the tax filing ecosystem is pretty dynamic and cannot afford any laxity. Also, the individual Income tax return filing date is set to pick up steam hence any further delay in a cent per cent performance would hurt well-earned credibility of relevant stakeholders.