The income tax department has selected database software major Oracle to enable online delivery of tax payer services including faster processing of returns, expeditious refund of claims and quicker investigation.

In one of the largest e-governance projects, the I-T department will use Oracle database and Oracle Fusion platform to develop a single national database, under which all 745 I-T offices in 510 cities will be linked, V S Mathur, DG, (systems), department of I-T, said.

To be completed in phases, Oracle will consolidate the existing 36 regional databases into a single national database and the project is scheduled to be operational by December 2006.

"We have undertaken a decisive step towards centralisation of IT services to improve process efficiencies. Once the project is operational, we will be able to improve the response time for the department while creating a simpler and easier tax interface for the citizens," J G Pendse, member, investigation, I-T department, said.

While declining to reveal the size of the deal with Oracle, he said this is part of the Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion) National Datacentre Project.

While Bharti along with IBM has already bagged the contract for networking of I-T offices, TCS [Get Quote] along with HP, Wipro-Sun and IBM are in fray for equipment and integrated services, B B Nanawati, commissioner of income tax (systems), said, adding that the contract would be awarded in a month.

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