The Prime Minister of India constituted a National Task Force on IT and Software Development in 1998. The purpose of this committee was to make specific recommendations for the establishment of IT institutions that would produce a skilled IT workforce. The vision was to bring India to the frontier of the field of information technology.

The Ministry of Human Resources Development through its order of 1st July 1998 constituted the Rame Gowda Committee. This expert committee was to submit a project report regarding the feasibility and logistics of setting up a National Institute of Excellence in Information Technology with Allied Sciences. This Institute would carry out pioneering research and development with an emphasis on industry linkages and networking at national and international levels.

This Expert Committee met a number of times and discussed the vision and scope of the institute against the backdrop of technological innovations, particularly in the field of Information Technology. Accordingly, the decision was taken that it was an opportune moment for India to exploit and harness IT at all levels, from grass-root applications to top-notch software development.

The national task force on IT had suggested a wide spectrum of recommendations spanning from wired-village concepts to $50-billion software development programs within 6-8 years. To achieve this target, there was an urgent need for massive manpower generation. Towards this end, the Task Force had called for a number of front-ranking IT centers of excellence, of which the first was to be established in Allahabad.

The Expert Committee then proposed the profile of an institute with all the relevant details with regard to location, funding and governance. It also came up with a budget of Rs. 41.70 crores for the establishment of an institute at Allahabad. It was the hope of the members of the Committee that the setting up of this institute would usher in an era of establishment of such centers across the country. Furthermore, this institute was expected to emerge as a national center of excellence in IT along with like sciences and technologies.

IIIT Hyderabad the first among the IIITs and pioneer among these institutes is established by government of Andhra Pradesh during the tenure of IT savvy chief minister Chandra Babu Naidu. It offers a world class education and was rated among the top 10 T-schools in India. Under the lines of IIIT Hyderabad other IIITs have been established, some by Ministry of HRD(Govt. of India)and some by different state governments.
IIIT Allahabad and IIITM Gwalior, which were started by Ministry of Human Resource Development (Govt. of India) provide an outstanding and highly rated educational experience with state-of-the-art infrastructure. IIIT-A is also rated among top 10 Engineering Schools in India
IIIT Bangalore, IIITM-K, IIIT Calcutta are the other institutes offering diverse courses and graduating brilliant engineers every year. IIIT Calcutta estd in 2000 by Govt of West Bengal has been renamed to SIT (School of Information Technology) and has been made the Information Technology Department of WBUT(West Bengal University of Technology-Kolkata) in the year 2004.