The DOE Secretary was in Pune to participate in `Update 99' a conference to mark the foundation day of the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), Pune. He urged Indian IT companies to have closer ties with silicon valley companies for promoting exports from India and creating a market for the country's products and services. The DoE had asked NASSCOM to submit a paper on ways to promote the Indian brand abroad.

Dewang Mehta, president of NASSCOM, said the suggested strategies were creation of a mega web site for Indian products, conducting frequent road shows in US and Europe and promoting 10 world class Indianproducts in the initial phase. Speaking at the conference, A K Chakravarti, advisor-IT, DoE, said that a group has been set up to look into the problem of internet domain name management which was vital to the growth of E-commerce.

The Central Vigilance Commissioner N Vittal who spoke on `Effectiveness of Computerisation in Security of Financial Institutions' decried the absence of a basic legal framework for e-com and urged the government to issue an ordinance for cyber laws.

For the last one and half year, the government has the draft legislation for cyber laws, but with the vicissitudes of parliamentary democracy, the Bill has not been introduced. It is better that such an ordinance be issued now when the Parliament is not in session, he said, explaining that if such an ordinance is issued, the six-month period will expire by mid-November and by the time the new Parliament will be in position. The fact that an ordinance has been issued will bring in automatic pressures for legislation, he said.

TheCentral Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) was of the opinion that computerisation could be of immense value in preventing frauds and corruption in the banking sector. He said that after becoming the Central Vigilance Commissioner, he had issued an order insisting on public sector banks to ensure that at least 70 per cent of their business is computerised by the year 2001. He felt that it was better to adopt preventive measures and cited the classic Harshad Mehta scam where lack of computerisation in the Public Debt Office of the Reserve Bank of India, led to the perpetration of scam worth Rs. 18,000 crore.

``All the banking companies, financial institutions under the purview of the CVC will have to compulsorily offer electronic clearance services to their customers with immediate effect. This step is visualised as a method of checking fraud because a significant part of frauds in the bank are related to remittances and collection in the payment system,'' he said. The RBI will put up a network of 438 VSATs linkedwith their hub so that Wide Area Network becomes operational within one year.