The IST NCP in India becomes reality. The International Co-operation Division of the Ministry of Information Technology (MIT) has been chosen by the Indian government as reference body for IST co-operation with the European Union. MIT will be supported, in its quality of NCP for the IST programme, by the "Indian Research Support Network", composed by 3 Indian organisations, ITSMA (InteractiveTechnology Software & Media Association), IIIT-b (International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore) and C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Pune).

Following the decision taken by the Indian government at the end of June, the European Commission acknowledged in early October this year the Ministry of Information Technology of India as its Contact Point for the IST programme in India. MIT will therefore be associated to the network of third countries contact points for the definition and implementation of IT research co-operation policies with Europe. Being the largest country in the world to run an IST NCP, India will opt for a decentralized structure, likely to meet the expectations and needs of different typologies of organisations. To do so, MIT has decided to extend the NCP mission to a network (the IRSN) of 3 organisations meant to follow up Euro-Indian co-operation in IT research with different categories of stakeholders. C-DAC will be in charge of liaising with public and private research centres, IIIT-b with universities and large companies, whereas Bangalore based ITSMA will focus on small and medium sized enterprises. MIT and the ISRN will be in charge of disseminating information and facilitate the participation of Indian organisations in the ICT funding scheme under the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, to start in January 2007. In order to acquire the necessary know-how and NCP working methodology, staff from MIT will undergo two training modules in the framework of the INCITE project.