back to article Indian government reverts to manual tax filings as new e-tax portal remains badly borked a week after launch

India’s Income Tax Department has acknowledged that its shiny new e-tax portal broke, badly, by authorising an extension for some tax filings and reverting to manual processing of printed documents. The new portal went live on June 8, and promptly proved sub-optimal, with would-be users complaining that it just didn’t work. …

  1. FozzyBear
    Pint

    El Reg!

    Don't expect a response anytime soon. They are too busy blaming each other for the TITSUP. Take comfort though, like any other major government engagement this is the gift that will keep giving for IT journalists.

    Just sit back, relax and grab the popcorn

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just waiting for the scammers to begin

    Hello

    I am calling you from the Indian Tax Department…… etc

  3. mikus

    You would think Indians would know better than to outsource anything locally after watching the mess they've made for the past 25 years in the US when playing that angle.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      UK too. Even funnier when you factor in that a very large number of those messes have been made by, er, Infosys.

      Still, I'm sure they can prove that the system has been supplied exactly to spec and I'm also sure they'll be happy to fix itmake additional changes on a T&M basis...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      It happened only because their better programmers are very busy writing software for Western companies...

  4. Wallsy
    Coat

    TITSUP

    Total

    Inability

    To

    Supplant

    Unwanted

    Paperwork

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Call me racist if you will, but I've yet to come across any software developed by Indians that wasn't flakey, clunky and/or needlessly complicated.

    A "qualified" developer doesn't mean a good developer.

    On a more light hearted note, "...Isko aap GHOOSE mein rakho..." is close to "shove it up your arse."

    1. bigphil9009

      At least have the courage to use your registered handle if you're going to spout such bigoted nonsense...

    2. tip pc Silver badge

      I’ve had the pleasure to work with many extremely knowledgeable and talented IT people from that part of the world and other 2nd and 3rd world nations, they usually have made the trip over here though.

      Do you want a b&b, premier inn or sandals resort? They all have beds and do breakfast.

    3. sw guy

      I did see really good SW, coming from India, though I also saw very bad one.

      Mind you, the price was not the same.

    4. BOFH in Training

      I have worked with good developers from India, and bad developers as well (although the good developers were working in other countries and not in India when I knew them).

      Funny thing, those two categories exist in developers locally sourced or from other countries as well.

      Maybe it's a matter of you paying peanuts and getting monkeys working for you ........

  6. Potemkine! Silver badge

    Minister quickly pointed the finger at

    Finding scapegoats is the usual way politicians deal with problems. One can also extend this statement to the C-suite.

    I pity the wage slaves that will be put at stake as a sacrifice to calm down the popular fury against the incompetence of the management.

  7. cantankerous swineherd

    resilient paperwork ftw.

  8. vtcodger Silver badge

    Why?

    Software is tough. GUI software is even harder because users can break threads and start doing something else pretty much at will. Web facing software is even tougher because it's GUI done on a limited, unreliable and obtuse framework often with ridiculous latency issues. Moreover simple designs that might work someday are almost always rejected in favor of glitzy stuff that all to often doesn't really work very well ever. And we haven't addressed security/privacy which makes things orders of magnitude harder and might be a significant issue in tax software.

    But doesn't anybody test anything anymore?

    Projects being months or years late is pretty much the norm. And has been ever since the dawn of the computer age. But why is so much stuff released when it's clearly broken?

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Because the release date was decided on following political requirements, not design requirements.

      Basically, the devs got the specs in their hands and just had to get something running by a given day.

      I'm not going to comment on Indian developer skills, but I'm sure that any group of developers is going to have a tough time on such a project if they need three more months than they have.

    2. Martin Gregorie

      Re: Why?

      Pretty much any non-trivial project will be over budget, late and buggy if the project manager and the technical people who design it, manage development and run unit, integration and acceptance testing are not part of the bid team and their inputs are ignored rather then used to determine pricing, staffing and timescales.

      If the project is an in-house one, then a senior user should be part of the design and management team..

      Unfortunately, civil servants and other people running governments and the like never staff projects this way and have no clue why it would be a good idea to do so.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    new e-tax portal remains badly borked a week after launch

    the obvious, perhaps philosophical poser is "where do the Indians outsource their outsourced outsources"?

    1. stiine Silver badge
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: new e-tax portal remains badly borked a week after launch

      INFOSYS LIMITED according to Companies House...

      What happens if I press this ----->

  10. Robert D Bank

    Given the silence from both sides it makes you wonder if there was some fraud or illegal data slurp or suchlike involved. Not a good look for either side.

  11. Tron Silver badge

    Empathy.

    Happy to keep doing my tax returns on paper and sending a cheque in the UK.

    Paper is generally more reliable than tech. Payment systems can be very troublesome, particularly as there are now increased demands on name/address accuracy. My actual postal address and the address my bank uses differ, whilst the name on my bank account, on my cards and full name all differ. Repeated attempts to persuade my bank to make corrections have come to nothing. Not a problem with a cheque, but endless 'payment failed' errors the last time I tried to pay a government service online.

    If you want to do something important, do it on paper, not online.

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