Trust Deficit

The latest buzzword in business and government circles is trust deficit. Everybody noticed with amusement that as soon as industry doyens such as Ratan Tata and Deepak Parekh indicated that they are not happy with the way Indian government is functioning, prime minister Manmohan Singh hit back, in his own assuming style, that he is concerned about the declining business ethics at India, Inc. The sad part is that both the parties are correct. Look in all the scam and business controversy headlines in the last few months, and you will see the business-politician-bureaucrat nexus.

Therefore what I see as we move ahead in 2011 and beyond is that governments as well as business houses will strengthen their systems and processes to ensure checks and balances for deterring politicians, babus, and the business houses from their nefarious designs. I have written earlier that one way perhaps to check these criminals is by IT deployment. For instance, in the Adarsh Society scam in Mumbai it has still not been settled who that land actually belongs to. Had all land records been digitized and stored properly, this confusion would not have come up. Also, in the same case, the process of land allotment, change of land use, building construction clearance have been grossly violated. Had there been a proper workflow or document management system in place, we could have, perhaps, caught this very early. Or at least the post mortem investigation would have been easier.

The IT industry, both vendors and practitioners, should not view this as something that will have no direct bearing on their fortunes. Subtle threats about global investors getting nervous about India are already doing the rounds. Mind you, today there are hardly any big and mega projects without foreign investment. Even if some of those get nervous and decide to move their money to other places, there will be impact.

My take on this is that CIOs can play a big role in putting systems that will help in building trust, internally as well as externally. And this is the time when they must go back to their CEOs and talk about it. Believe me, today CEOs are ready to listen, specially those of large enterprises. The investor and government pressure on them is going to increase. The latest half page ads in leading newspapers about Tata-L&T Dharma port project's violation of Forest Conservation Act will surely be very embarrassing for everybody. It is now time that the IT heads, whether in private companies or in the government departments, stood up and told their bosses they can play a role in avoiding these situations.

While there is no formal industry forum for the CIOs there are lots of opportunities. For instance, India's largest, and now the 8th annual CIO business technology and leadership forum, C-Change, will see participation from the country's top 100 enterprises. They must talk about the trust deficit, and come to some resolution as to what they want to do about it. Voice&DATa promises to take their resolution to genuinely concerned leaders and policy makers.