Oracle India and Hewlett Packard India would jointly set up a e-governance Centre of Excellence in Gurgaon to support and provide a platform for e-governance applications in the country.

The centre, which will be located at Oracle's office premises in Gurgaon will be up and running from April 21, Shekhar Dasgupta, MD, Orcale India told reporters in New Delhi.

CMC, NIC, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ram Infoteck are the partners with Oracle and HP for deployment of the solutions, he said.

Both the partners, however, declined to comment on the quantum of investment put in by each of them in the centre. The centre will support initiatives by central, state and local governments in India and provide a platform for development of model applications and will also showcase them, Balu Doraiswamy, president, HP India said.

It will also offer technical consultation and, proof of concepts of the models, Dasgupta said, adding it has currently taken up projects related to revenue collections and VAT, citizen services delivery, workflow-based applications in government's security and wireless technologies.

On the issue of manpower of CoE, Derek Williams, executive vice president, Asia Pacific, Oracle, said since the centre is virtual in nature and could be accessed from any HP or Orcale centres globally, it is difficult to put a number to the experts involved in it.