2021 Strategic and Political Analysis-1

[Tanaji]

Cyranoji,

The issues being reported are basic bugs and not hidden ones that requires a detailed testing program to reveal. Login screens with huge latency reveal either zero testing (unlikely) or a fundamental misunderstanding of requirements or fault in design phase.

Then there is the issue of Infosys claiming CAs were not used to do the testing resulting in changes. This is classic vendor deflection that fails to answer the main issue.

[Cyrano]

Such problems after going live are simply unacceptable. Even if its not the SP's doing (for ex SP may not be managing the live env.s) its a professional and moral obligation to alert the client and try and prevent such incidents if SP is able to. We don't have the facts and causal analysis, so lets hope the problems get fixed, fully and quickly.

[Karan M]

Various factors like authentication, security features, load balancing, interfaces, infra sizing, hosting architecture etc can impact performance. But these can be fixed with required effort by any company, even Infosys. If the problem comes from incomplete/incoherent specifications or too many (policy driven) changes on the fly that are contradictory and require design rework and redev and retest we are in for a bigger and longer mess. That the project is critical for the Govts transformational agenda (which it obviously is) doesn't change the impact of these factors. Unless we have technical facts regarding the project's conduct itself, we can only speculate.

Simple point. Are these issues not taken into account when Infosys handles critical projects abroad? How is it that they all function but when its given two critical projects in a row, it flubs them up completely? Calling the RSS silly or accusing them of slander is giving the org a free pass. Fact is they are merely voicing what many are saying, its either that Infy couldnt handle projects of this magnitude or that something else was at play. The GOI by the way is openly accusing Infy and has called its leadership for getting things fixed repeatedly, even they appear fed up. Can you even tabulate how much revenue loss GOI has suffered in the GST portal issue itself and the loss of goodwill in the biz community? People turned from supporters to haters merely because of that one issue.

[Karan M]

All your defense of Infosys apart they've completely mucked up two important projects, the GST and now the tax filing one. Its reflected very poorly on GOI and its they who took the blame.

always bearing in mind that infosys has handled far bigger projects in the past and done well.

SOP was to place freshers in these projects after 3 month COBOL boot camp. After they learn some programming on the job and were about to get do some real work for the customer, they were replaced with a new batch of freshers. T

These companies treat the Indian Govt. as a lower class customer, reserving their better talent for the goras.

Nachiket's post sums it up nicely. That is the truth. Many of the IT 'Majors' (Colonels & Brigs as well) often put inexperienced or under performing people when it comes to GoI projects. Vegetable Oil Co IIRC had once completely messed up the ESI (Employees State Insurance) 'computerisation'. In the case of Infosys it is good that GoI actually summoned their top man for a 'dressing down'. State & Central governments have also become smarter these days; many of the RFPs and contracts are now very accurate on specifications with even the penalty clauses neatly explained. Infy etc. will start behaving themselves once GoI starts penalising them. SEZ tax exemptions etc should also come with some caveats, which encourages the IT companies to put
good efforts in delivering products/solutions to government agencies.

This is exactly what most people suspected. That the tier C, or even tier D team was handling the IT portal to learn on the go, because it was lower margin. While goras abroad get the whole "export quality" treatment. Call it sabotage, unethical, unacceptable, whatever. Its still going to drive GOI mad, and it should. They took the credibility hit first and foremost.

[Karan M]

I tried the IT portal a few days back. I had to go to Youtube and a bunch of webpages to "trick" the portal into functioning. After that it crashed entirely. Come on man. Dont tell me a company which is giving the goras a run for their dinero in their home markets couldnt set up a website and have it run ok. If they were that incompetent, they would never have scaled. They are competent and quite likely darn good if they put their resources to it. Looks like this was a lower priority project and got treated like chalta hain.

[Kaivalya]

Part of the problem : Lowest bid. Even though it doesn't mean that the site can be down for 2 days.

https://m.timesofindia.com/india/niti-s ... 484186.cms

Niti Aayog will prepare a draft proposal to suggest alternatives to the current ‘lowest bidder’ (L1) tendering norm to overcome deficiencies in the process which doesn’t give sufficient weightage to quality parameters. In the current system, which is called Least Cost Selection Method, the bidder quoting the lowest price wins the contract

Unfortunately this government has to expend political capital if it changes or adds procurement processes. Not sure if it is even in the agenda in the next few years. If goi starts talking about it "ambani adani" chorus will start

[Cyrano]

Please watch the entire video if you can. This was over a month ago, after the new portal had been live for a month.


There are what seem to be obvious technical glitches that the SP can be blamed for. The OTP generation, acct lock out authentication issues seem similar to what some forumites reported with Arogyasetu app. But the overall picture is that the new portal was simply not ready in many aspects. The IT dept was also not ready since they did not release filing schemas for certain type of ITRs and other process aspects that need to be in place outside IT portal.

How on earth did the IT Dept give a go ahead to Go Live? Its their call, not SP's.

Why did they decide to make the older IT portal unavailable? That again is Govt's call not SP's.

I think all involved parties made a royal F*ck up. Thats probably why the Govt is not taking a very hard stance on Infosys.

[Karan M]

Boss, the go live happens with the vendor claiming everything has been delivered to customer's requirement. The user does not have the resources to sit and test all use cases. They'd withdraw the earlier portal if the new one was to go live and the vendor commits to everything being ok. They trusted the vendor.

And GOI not taking a hard stance. How hard a stance should it further extend to beyond summoning the CEO himself?

I have been using AarogyaSetu and CoWin from the very beginning and didnt face a fraction of the issues I faced with this "new" IT portal. A glorified website, not some earth shattering supercomputing code for the next interdimensional Mars lander. Stuff which Infosys should know like the back of its hand. If they were so bad with international projects would they be so famous and well regarded across the board. They scaled up because they were (mostly) competent, for customers abroad.

Eitherways I am old enough to remember the forum flamewars where maha gyanis wanted Kaveri to be given to Infy and Arjun to Wipro, stating both would do all that double-quick. I guess that idea is no longer viable either, given desi indoos are given the short thrift.

I hope GOI at least learns from this debacle and focuses more on stringent program management, legal provisos and quality focus before its next ambitious digitalization project. And Infosys for its own sake changes its own program management practices. As a shareholder (and supporter) I am deeply discomfited.

[Cyrano]

You mean vendor lied about entire functionalities being ready and no one in the IT Dept even bothered to make even a few cursory checks and said "oh its ready, great let me hit the go live button and go back to chai biscoot? If thats the case they both deserve each other and citizen be damned !

Hard to believe this happened with Nandan at helm who previously delivered path breaking projects like Aadhar and knows the Govt's ways of working all too well.

There is a whole lot thats not known to public in this matter.

[Karan M]

The question boils down to a simple thing which you for whatever reason are unwilling to admit - how is that the vendor was unable to develop these entire functionalities? That's the most basic thing. Calling the customer incompetent for not catching the vendor out is beside the point.

There is a whole lot thats not known to public in this matter.

Careful now, you dont want to go down the path of the RSS insinuating it is sabotage and all that.

[Ambar]

While we are busy discussing Infy, project (mis)management, agile methodology, robust UAT testing etc. Rakesh Dakait and his coterie have predictably kicked off another round of protests. Predictable because UP elections are just 4 months away, after a "mahapanchayat" was organized in the Jat stronghold of Muzzafarnagar, he has now moved to block yet another highway in Karnal, HR. I think the rate at which NCR highways are disappearing, the Porsche/Mercedes driving farmer leaders themselves will be forced to ditch their 1 cr SUVs and buy helicopters for their weekly Chadigarh/Rohtak to Delhi R&R sessions.

[Cyrano]

I'm equally baffled. If the vendor was "unable" to develop entire functionalities because they didn't have the required competencies or resources and therefore lied about it for years and delivered crap with gaping holes - that doesn't make sense. Thats suicide for an entire department of several 100s of people of various seniority levels all the way up to some VPs. No one even halfway sane would try to do that, and even if they tried impossible to keep a lid on it - they would get caught in regular mandatory internal project audits way before client gets to know about it. The Govt would be majorly pi$$ed at being so duped and file a lawsuit accusing gross negligence and wilful misconduct, and that would lead to unlimited liability and make very senior heads roll in the company.

Things don't add up when we try to explain why things got to this state solely based on whats in public domain. Sabotage - its most definitely not - that would be total corporate suicide of a company worth a 100B$ and 2.5 lakh employees and an otherwise mostly stellar record.

We haven't yet reached the stage of "when all explanations are exhausted then the only remaining explanation must be true howsoever absurd it might be".

[Tanaji]

You mean vendor lied about entire functionalities being ready and no one in the IT Dept even bothered to make even a few cursory checks and said "oh its ready, great let me hit the go live button and go back to chai biscoot? If thats the case they both deserve each other and citizen be damned !

Hard to believe this happened with Nandan at helm who previously delivered path breaking projects like Aadhar and knows the Govt's ways of working all too well.

There is a whole lot thats not known to public in this matter.

More likely that the issues manifest at peak loads. The customer i.e the IT department is hardly in a position to generate traffic simulating peak load conditions…. However one hopes Infosys can or would have as part of their testing cycle. Clearly they haven’t, the reasons are best known to them.

Blaming customer for not using CAs for unit testing is not helping, especially when a site that you control and built is down for 2 days.

As to why old site was decommissioned… hard to guess, but to prevent users from filing returns from both places, a scenario that the back end systems may not be equipped to handle.

[V_Raman]

Why is the govt providing tax portal for citizens? Why can’t it be like USA where IRS has a backend to submit tax returns and private companies provide tax software which can be installed on a PC?

[Cyrano]

Here is a real life story I've seen unfold in front of me:

Big org transformation program with high complexity sponsored by CFO & CEO. Project launched with vendor chosen after 2 years RFP process, L3 bidder brought down to L1 fixed price - procurement head happy he'll get his bonus. HQ buzzes with activity. Smartly dressed consultant(e)s conducting workshops, design thinking sessions, off sites etc for a few months, and produce copious documents and disappear. But the client would not sign off on specs - business rules and validations actually because that means some guy has to stick its neck out and commit that this is how and why we do it. And that same rules hold for future too. OR something new/better must be done for the future and I have the authority to specify it. Some large corporates develop habits that are never codified when things are done manually. But digitisation means everything must be defined and programmed and tested and validated. So at some point half way into the project, a huge number of documents pile up for customer validation - and suddenly everyone gets cold feet. No one wants to bell the cat. So specs & business rules are partially validated or kept on hold.

The vendor meanwhile has ramped up a huge team and is ready to start developing. Takes calculated risks and develops what is clear, but again team starts idling. So they start developing stuff pending validation in the hope that the specs written after so many discussions, workshops etc must be fairly accurate.

Strong program mangers escalate on client side, finally some validations are done, but a huge chunk of changes and new stuff comes in because client team suddenly starts innovating and thinking out of the box thanks to new COO. Dev team now starts adding, retrofitting, force fitting all this late stuff into existing stuff. Shit hits the fan. Project is re-estimated, cost balloons to 2.5x. Client says no way. Vendor comes down to 1.7x. Finally 1.5x is agreed, meanwhile 6 more months pass, and a lot more code is written.

All of a sudden client CEO says you have to stick to initial deadline for go live. Vendor says no way. A month later partial go live is agreed. Vendor releases code tortuously developed. Bugs hit the fan. Client screams. Go live postponed by 1 month. Client fatigue sets in to test UAT, big reorg happens, COO replaced, new client team wants to vendor go live immly to avoid getting blamed for what previous team did. Go Live date approaches but last minute user training is very limited - train the trainer for a bunch of clueless guys over 3 days. Change Management got axed due to cost increase. Meanwhile Go Live prep is done with haste. Vendor realises after internal audit project margin is -40% despite cost increase. Only 10% of the initial team at project start still remain, though the team is 2x, most are new to the project - thank you attrition.

Both sides are fed up and through a series of bad calls decide to go live in a limited mode. But client team makes vague communication around what will the new project/portal do. Go Live happens data migration 80% successful, both sides agree to party the rest later its old data anyway. Next morning many ppl cant login. Oh thats a branch we acquired - they are not on Microsoft AD. No one told us. AR Invoices pending payments cant be found ! 3 out of Top 10 clients data was missed in migration. Why didn't vendor check? Why didn't client check? They are your clients, your data, we don't know who's who. Vendor PM faints on the way home and goes on long medical leave. CFO tells CEO quarterly results must be delayed by 2 weeks - receipts cant be matched to invoices, and P&L is not stacking up compared to last Q numbers. He doesnt know why but must be the new system. When CEO rips him off he confesses actually lets postpone results by 1 quarter. CEO whose stock options mature next Q is furious and calls vendor CEO to come and meet him... I'll spare you the rest.

Now try to assign blame.

[ManSingh]

I'm equally baffled. If the vendor was "unable" to develop entire functionalities because they didn't have the required competencies or resources and therefore lied about it for years and delivered crap with gaping holes - that doesn't make sense. Thats suicide for an entire department of several 100s of people of various seniority levels all the way up to some VPs. No one even halfway sane would try to do that, and even if they tried impossible to keep a lid on it - they would get caught in regular mandatory internal project audits way before client gets to know about it. The Govt would be majorly pi$$ed at being so duped and file a lawsuit accusing gross negligence and wilful misconduct, and that would lead to unlimited liability and make very senior heads roll in the company.

Things don't add up when we try to explain why things got to this state solely based on whats in public domain. Sabotage - its most definitely not - that would be total corporate suicide of a company worth a 100B$ and 2.5 lakh employees and an otherwise mostly stellar record.

We haven't yet reached the stage of "when all explanations are exhausted then the only remaining explanation must be true howsoever absurd it might be".

I think we are conflating the capabilities of various BU's. In the old times, the BU handling domestic projects ( INDIA BU as it used to be called ) was probably the only one built for a geography and not capabilities ( BFSI, Healthcare etc. ). Reason was low volume and hence poor performance/growth etc.
I don't know if it is still organized that way ( probably is ). I don't think it is 100s of people and few VP's big. It is probably a lot smaller and possibly further outsourced as well.

For the IT project, we do know that once a project gets messed up like it currently is, it probably points to an issue from the use case modelling, initial design etc. UAT or anything else will not improve this. Its probably throwing bodies and extremely long work schedules now for the unfortunate.

[Cyrano]

Why is the govt providing tax portal for citizens? Why can’t it be like USA where IRS has a backend to submit tax returns and private companies provide tax software which can be installed on a PC?

if you see the video above, such options are envisaged but are not ready.

[Tanaji]

Why is the govt providing tax portal for citizens? Why can’t it be like USA where IRS has a backend to submit tax returns and private companies provide tax software which can be installed on a PC?

Why should common citizens have to pay a private provider just for the honour of paying tax? Just because US does it, doesn’t make it right for us.

Incidentally, UK provides a portal as well but not all people have to file a return in the first place.

[Suraj]

Why is the govt providing tax portal for citizens? Why can’t it be like USA where IRS has a backend to submit tax returns and private companies provide tax software which can be installed on a PC?

Please, the US is about the worst example of tax filing mechanism that one could offer. You're aware that all the major tax prep companies in the US are involved in a lawsuit for actively collaborating to keep people from finding the direct IRS filing site, instead taking them to their paid options?
H&R Block, TurboTax Accused Of Obstructing Access To Free Tax Filing

It's the government's job to ensure it provides a seamless and simple means for citizenry to file their taxes. In the US one pays anywhere from $20-100 just for simple filing (income + stock/MF investments), even more for more complex personal cases. And one no longer even gets to deduct that cost. And it's not even a one time cost - one has to buy the software again each year. If you have business interests in multiple states, you have to buy modules for each state and that costs extra.

The American tax filing setup is a pile of nandi droppings. Shouldn't even be part of the conversation with respect to India.

[ritesh]

Aadhar is just another level of incompetence... Myself struggling for last few years. Less said the better for these chavni chaap IT majors and their non existent processes.

[Cyrano]

I'm making some discreet enquiries will share anything reliable and shareable.

[arshyam]

Someone asked why the old portal had been shutdown. The reason was that the database used is different (mist likely the schemas too) and the data has already been migrated, so keeping it live in parallel is not an option. Not sure why backward compatibility wasn't provided, perhaps it wasn't contracted for.

Reinstating the old portal is even more difficult now, as that data would immediately go out of sync with reconciliation becoming almost impossible.

Not authoritative, just something I remember reading somewhere.

[chetak]

[V_Raman]

I would gladly pay a one-time-per-year cost of $30-$50 for tax prep software that works - which I have been doing for decades now. maybe in India - INR500 might not be too bad if the software works. IMO of course. That said - there is no one stopping a private company in India from doing this I guess.

[arshyam]

If the portal breaks under load, then alone UAT won't catch it. It's the vendor's responsibility to stress test up to the expected peak load on the system, and then some. One can argue that the expected load in the spec is not accurate, but that's unlikely as the old IT portal itself had some peak load capability and our babus are good at asking for something more than that. Even otherwise, common sense would dictate that peak load is bound to be super high and some strategy be kept in place. If the peak load isn't well estimated, one can start with the numbers for the old system and design for that capacity with room to grow. Then monitor the new system as it handles load and tweak performance to get to a more accurate load number. Flipkart, for example, has a dedicated team on standby during their big billion sales, to monitor system parameters and quickly respond if any part is running hot. Something like that could have been thought of. None of this is rocket science, nor is something a company of Infosys's calibre won't be aware of. Yet, we've had entire system go offline for days.

NS was right to publically chastise Infosys. This is not the first mess they are associated with - the commerce ministry portal, GST, and then this. All have had some major issues or the other. Nit just teething problems. I suppose the contrast with TCS managed projects only added to the frustration: Passport seva, new irctc portal, etc. seem generally functional with minimal hassle. Though personally, I think TCS too would have its equivalent of "desi projects are for freshers" due to low margins.

[Cyrano]

French IT portal for individuals & families works wonderfully well. The online form looks exactly like the paper form with just data fields accessible. Authentification by Tax ID and specific passwd. No OTP mess. Comes prefilled with salary and TDS data provided by employer, capital gains, interest etc from your bank. Other income, other deductions claimed etc must be filled by user. Shows simulated tax amount on completion. You can save and come back to make changes. Upon submission using digital signature, generates final tax filing, final tax assessment, always avl in the portal, pdf can be downloaded any time.

It was introduced a decade ago iirc, there were some years where performance problems occured, once or twice Govt had to revise dates coz portal was not ready. The whole platform is stabilised now, but you are advised not to wait for last day - too much concurrent load can still cause outages. France has about 23 million returns filed per year, so really no comparision with India's scale.

Annual report with Key stats of DGFiP (IT Dept) is avl on economie.gouv.fr
Its annual IT (inf tech) budget is 240M€ !!!
Lots of investment in AI, call center, ongoing digital transformation.

Just to get a perspective.

[rsingh]

French are educated and homogeneous society. It works in Belgium as well I have all my information on one portal at one click away.Again you need educated population. I think half of Indians are busy undermining rest of Indians. We have politicians who anti india in open. Gangs of thugs are allowed to manipulate crowed. So let's not compare with Francw.

[V_Raman]

Maybe GoI can invest in OSS tax software like this - http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ - and publish it every year.

[Suraj]

I would gladly pay a one-time-per-year cost of $30-$50 for tax prep software that works - which I have been doing for decades now. maybe in India - INR500 might not be too bad if the software works. IMO of course. That said - there is no one stopping a private company in India from doing this I guess.

That is merely normalizing American incompetence. The average salaried person should not have to do any of that you're saying. Here's how it should work:

* log into IRS website between Jan and April, find a 1040 form filled out for them with their W2 and 1099s , all of which the IRS already has copies of.
* Enter missing information, e.g. charitable donations
* Review and complete, get refund right away or pay.

Instead what exists now:
* Get all the forms by post or from accounts online
* Buy software every year ($20-100 or even more)
* Enter all information into software, unless the employer/financial entity enables it to be downloaded into the software. Otherwise you spend a while entering 'what's the number in box 14' and similar, even though every one of these IRS forms is already present with the IRS too. The whole exercise is pointless and redundant stupidity.
* You enter information that IRS doesn't already know.
* If you need to handle income from multiple states, you buy modules for each (~$25 each). To file online for each state, you pay for that too.
* The software tells you if you have a risk of being audited and you can buy 'audit protection', i.e. more $$

Somehow this whole thing is supposed to be 'better' ? There are many other developed countries that do not make tax filing such a ridiculous process, and whose systems can be emulated. The US is garbage in this regard and should never be an example.

[V_Raman]

Please give me examples of countries with reasonable population doing any of this - 100million+ population that is.

India trying to be like European countries is a recipe for failure IMO. We are too big to be supported just by the govt. we need to enable private enterprise. If we need an army of tax professionals - so be it. Will generate employment. You don’t need to be a cpa or ca to become a tax preparation consultant for majority of the cases.

[rajsunder]

I would gladly pay a one-time-per-year cost of $30-$50 for tax prep software that works - which I have been doing for decades now. maybe in India - INR500 might not be too bad if the software works. IMO of course. That said - there is no one stopping a private company in India from doing this I guess.

Tax prep software is no big deal, i believe that there are many mobile apps that provide the service.

The whole problem lies on the government application that accepts data from these private players who operate these mobile apps.

[Suraj]

Please give me examples of countries with reasonable population doing any of this - 100million+ population that is.

India trying to be like European countries is a recipe for failure IMO. We are too big to be supported just by the govt. we need to enable private enterprise. If we need an army of tax professionals - so be it. Will generate employment. You don’t need to be a cpa or ca to become a tax preparation consultant for majority of the cases.

Why ? What difference does 50m vs 100M vs 200m make here ? Every single tax form we deal with at tax time is already with the IRS. That's for every tax filer.

The current system forces duplication of effort. One has to pay money - sometimes several times over - to pay money. Everyone's submission ultimately gets reviewed against IRS' own internal numbers. Why would anyone need to pay extra to do what the IRS internally already has computed for your case ? Just provide a pre-filled 1040 on IRS.gov and that is all that is needed.

The complexity of the US tax system is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're arguing that it's a positive because it 'generates employment'. There's no productive value to the economy from thousand being employed to confirm how much money you owe in taxes. That industry then lobbies the GOTUS to keep things complex.

India shouldn't base its efforts around the worst efforts seen from others. A large part of the developed world, including Japan with 120M people, doesn't do it like the US. They have no 'tax prep industry'. Everything's already done for you on their version of the tax dept website:
Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not Here?

In Japan, you get a postcard in early spring from Kokuzeicho (Japan’s I.R.S.) that says how much you earned last year, how much tax you owed and how much was withheld. If you disagree, you go into the tax office to work it out. For nearly everybody, though, the numbers are correct, so you never have to file a return.

When I told my friend Togo Shigehiko in Tokyo that Americans spend hours or days each spring gathering records and filling out tax forms, he was incredulous. “Why would anybody want to do that?” he asked.

What’s going on in these countries — and in many other developed democracies — is that government computers handle the tedious chore of filling out your tax return. The system is called “pre-filled forms,” or “pre-populated returns.” The taxpayer just has to check the numbers. If the agency got something wrong, there’s a mechanism for appeal.

Our own Internal Revenue Service could do the same for tens of millions of taxpayers. For most families, the I.R.S. already knows all the numbers — wages, dividends and interest received, capital gains, mortgage interest paid, taxes withheld — that we are required to enter on Form 1040.

The I.R.S. sends out a letter called a CP2000 Notice by the millions every year. This is the form that says: You entered $4,311 on Line 9b, but the reports we have on file say the figure should have been $4,756. I get these letters now and then — the revenue service is always right — and it makes me mad. If the government already has all this stuff, why did I have to spend hours digging through receipts and statements and 1099 forms to report what the I.R.S. already knows?

That's it. The govt already gets all the paperwork, it gets calculated electronically, and you can appeal any deviation in calculation. This is how the tax return system works and is supposed to work. The US is the worst possible example here.

[V_Raman]

USA is that way as there are many exemptions that can be claimed and exemptions vary by state as well. it is not as uniform as other countries that have automated it. i cant understand why india should not have this avenue for employment.

[Suraj]

USA is that way as there are many exemptions that can be claimed and exemptions vary by state as well. it is not as uniform as other countries that have automated it. i cant understand why india should not have this avenue for employment.

1. The complexity of the US tax code is not even remotely a positive.
2. Regardless of how complex it is or not, any one filing taxes in the US is duplicating work already done by the IRS. Neither you nor the tax prep companies are doing anything more than trying to match the calculations the IRS made. You are not doing anything unique or productive - if you don't line up with IRS numbers, then guess what, the IRS still goes by their numbers.

An 'industry' where people use calculators to confirm your math against the tax department's math is not a productive industry. The simple solution is what so many others do - just provide the tax departments computed results in a filled format for you to sign off or appeal.

You're arguing in favour of an industry that has no productive value and is a prime example of US political corruption, as a model India should emulate. Tax prep companies paying Indian politicians to keep the tax laws complex so everyone's compelled to pay the CPA each year ? No thanks.

[Karan M]

I'm equally baffled. If the vendor was "unable" to develop entire functionalities because they didn't have the required competencies or resources and therefore lied about it for years and delivered crap with gaping holes - that doesn't make sense. Thats suicide for an entire department of several 100s of people of various seniority levels all the way up to some VPs. No one even halfway sane would try to do that, and even if they tried impossible to keep a lid on it - they would get caught in regular mandatory internal project audits way before client gets to know about it. The Govt would be majorly pi$$ed at being so duped and file a lawsuit accusing gross negligence and wilful misconduct, and that would lead to unlimited liability and make very senior heads roll in the company.

As multiple folks with prior awareness of the innards have said, this seems to have been SOP for desi firms in the past when dealing with GOI projects, and no heads have rolled. Which is why it may have continued. Hopefully it stops now. The GOI has run out of patience and Infy might be made an example of. So far, they've skated by purely because they're seen as a figurehead of Indian IT and this GOI would not want to damage that (to the benefit of foreign vendors).

Things don't add up when we try to explain why things got to this state solely based on whats in public domain. Sabotage - its most definitely not - that would be total corporate suicide of a company worth a 100B$ and 2.5 lakh employees and an otherwise mostly stellar record.

We haven't yet reached the stage of "when all explanations are exhausted then the only remaining explanation must be true howsoever absurd it might be".

Either it is incompetence in being unable to manage the process or sabotage, take your pick. No other way left to muck up what was so straight-forward. The key issue is other firms seem to do well with GOI projects. If Infy thought GOI was so difficult to deal with, nobody forced them to take the L1 deal. At the end of the day, its the country which bore huge revenue loss and the GOI which had to deal with irate business over GST portal too. How long should they just keep quiet?

[Vayutuvan]

All the major credit card companies (visa, amex, mastercard, diner's club etc)have such legacy FORTRAN based systems. These systems are hugely robust, reliable and very secure and many are supported from India on a 24x7 basis

Not FORTRAN but IBM 360 assembly and COBOL. CICS/IMS is done using Mainframe Assembly. IMS DBMS schemas are described in Assembly. The OS itself is written in PL/S a proprietary version of PL/I. None outside IBM OS division, even with in IBM, had access to the compiler nor the language definition. CICS is a TPS (Transaction Processing System) which has very high throughput for transactions.

[Vayutuvan]

Indeed… and in fact the scalability problem was demonstrably solved in an Indian environment on the IRCTC railway portal. Who did that one btw? It would be interesting if it was Infosys.

The original reservation system was done with many programmers who were alumni of the School of Automation, IISc, Bengaluru. Sukumar Reddy (BE from University College of Engg., OU, Power Eng. 1980) is one name that comes to mind.

The guts are still the same, AFAIK.

[arshyam]

USA is that way as there are many exemptions that can be claimed and exemptions vary by state as well. it is not as uniform as other countries that have automated it. i cant understand why india should not have this avenue for employment.

India too has a lot of exemptions and sub-clauses (some would argue, too many), yet the old portal handled it pretty well. So it's (literally) not rocket science. The US IRS is a dinosaur in comparison - not only is every transaction automated and available to the IRS online, the tax code is simpler and the number of exemptions and allowances much lesser, they also use a lot of (again, literally) paperwork to deal with taxpayers. I know this firsthand having filed my taxes in both countries, and switched to TurboTax (and paid for it) out of sheer frustration with the direct filing experience. And this was only federal tax, since the state I lived in had no state income tax.

The problem here is not whether India should follow the US and emulate that broken system, but that the existing portal's replacement was poorly executed. That by itself does not mean we should not have a portal - I can't understand why this is even an argument unless one's argument is based on "massa knows bhest".

Btw, the old portal as well as the new system have APIs for private players to plug into, so it's not like companies like ClearTax don't exist. If they want to provide better service or compete on quality, all power to them. Infy, in all its wisdom, has not opened up the APIs for the new system yet.

[arshyam]

The deadline given by the MoF is 5 days away (15 Sep) and I am yet to start on my returns this year given so many horror stories floating around with this new portal. I am not the only one in this boat. I hope the govt extends the deadline, otherwise we could have another round of outages later this month as a lot of last minute applications flood in.

[SBajwa]

by Suraj
The complexity of the US tax system is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're arguing that it's a positive because it 'generates employment'. There's no productive value to the economy from thousand being employed to confirm how much money you owe in taxes. That industry then lobbies the GOTUS to keep things complex

off course., IRS is a huge mess. Every 4 years we have new government that brings in new laws which means new business rules, new software and tax filers having no clue whether previous laws are valid or not. for example we just got used to the Trump's tax laws now next year we have no clue what new laws Biden is getting through the congress (home office work for example might be changed, new medical bill claims, etc)