Better public procurement for IT in India

Ashok Pal Singh (), Karthik Suresh () and Susan Thomas ()
Additional contact information
Ashok Pal Singh: Independent
Karthik Suresh: National Law School
Susan Thomas: xKDR Forum

No 51, Working Papers from xKDR

Abstract: Information technology (IT) systems are now ubiquitous in government. The Government of India has tripled its spending in real terms on IT procurement over the last fifteen years. IT procurement is tricky because these systems need continuous maintenance and refinement, and traditional systems of procurement are unsuitable for solving the incomplete contract problem that follows IT procurement. We build on three case studies from India -- Aadhaar, Passport Seva, and MCA-21 -- to make the case for why we need new thinking on IT procurement. Our solutions hinge around the fact that the government needs to build robust internal technical expertise even when system development has been outsourced. We make the case for flexible contracting, early concept verification, and strategic investments in state HR capabilities to successfully navigate the marketplace for digital services.

JEL-codes: D86 H57 K12 L86 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2026-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.xkdr.org/papers/2026Singhetal_rp_itProcurement.pdf First version, 2026 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:anf:wpaper:51

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from xKDR
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ami Dagli ().