Army, NeGD ink pact for developing revamped app

The Army and the National eGovernance Division Friday inked a pact for developing a revamped application to maintain the centralized database for personnel, equipment and major stores to provide management-related information to the force, a statement said. The National eGovernance Division is a part of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

The Management Information Systems Organisation (MISO) of the Indian Army is the nodal agency under the Directorate General of Information Systems (DGIS) which is mandated to maintain the centralized database for personnel, equipment and major stores to provide management-related information to Integrated HQ of MoD (Army) and other agencies, it said. The application needed a thorough revamp.

To meet the organizational requirements and enhanced user aspirations, rather than employing the conventional developmental framework, the DGIS experimented with a new collaborative approach with the MeitY for developing the new MISO application, the statement said. Development work, under MeitY's aegis, started at Bhaskaracharya Institute of Space Applications and Geo-Informatics (BISAG), Gandhinagar which is a CMMI-5 level institute under Department of Science and Technology, Government of Gujarat, it said.

"In a short span of time, the experiment has paid rich dividends and has appeared as the panacea for undertaking automation of the Indian Army at the fast pace," the statement said. To formalize the entire developmental framework, structures and methodology, Lt Gen Anil Kapoor, Director General of Information Systems and M S Rao, President and CEO, National E-governance Division inked an MoU in the presence of Shri TP Singh, Director, BISAG, it added.

This signing of the agreement is first of its kind inter-ministerial initiative between the MoD and the MeitY and is sure to lead to similar joint frameworks for finding innovative solutions in collaborative manner for the Indian Army, the statement said.