It's been a long and hot summer for every stakeholder and partner of the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), a private company that is developing and building the IT system that will process up to 3 billion invoices—B2B and B2C—in a month. Since 2015, the GSTN has selected a managed service provider (MSP), Infosys , and 34 GSTN Suvidha Providers ( GSP ), which feature accounting firms, technology companies and so on. All their collective energy is converging to get the IT system up and running ahead of the 1 July GST roll-out.But on 9 June, at a GSP workshop in Gurgaon, chief executive of GSTN Prakash Kumar announced revised timelines for the release of the APIs (application programming interfaces) that were pending.Four days later, Kumar told ET that the APIs will be released in staggered manner based on what is required first. “With this mechanism, we hope majority of them (GSPs) will be ready in time.”APIs are the code that allows two software systems to communicate with each other. The GSPs can connect to the GST portal because of the APIs, which power GSPs’ customers to file and reconcile their GST filings. The new release dates -- the first of which is 29 June -- were perilously close to the July 1 roll-out of the ‘One Tax’ for the nation. July 29 (today), for instance, is the release of the GST Return (GSTR) 1 Live API. There were frayed nerves.“You can’t build an IT product until the specifications are frozen,” says a GSP on the condition of anonymity. “To be fair to GSTN, we are all dependent on GST Council at the end of the day.” The GST Council—which governs GST under finance minister Arun Jaitley—was alert to the situation, and provided a two-month breather for GSTN and the GSPs to release the APIs based on the new formats.A few days passed until a request for proposal (RFP) on June 15 proved particularly irksome for GSPs. The RFP had the heading: Hiring of Agency for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) at GSTN. UAT is a term for ‘beta testing,’ the second phase of software testing in which a sampling of the intended audience tries the product out. Some of the GSPs who saw it were surprised, to put it mildly. ET spoke with five of them. One of them wondered aloud: “If you look at the scope, which is testing of APIs and UAT test cases and all, if they are going to be made now, if the RFP is going to come out now, when is testing going to happen?”Kumar of GSTN clarified, saying the UAT is for functions like ‘appeal’ and ‘assessment & adjudication’ and ‘enforcement’ – functions which are many months away and part of Phase 2. “The three things we have to do (immediately)—the portal, registration, payment and return—are ready,” he explains.Another earlier RFP on April 26—to develop an MS-Excel based offline utility module—had irked the GSPs when it was announced. A Delhi-based source who has seen the GSTN from its early days says this wasn’t originally part of the RFP—even when Infosys was signed up in September 2015.Another GSP says, “Is it not fair to expect that the upload tool will be part of Infosys’ mandate? But then, why was that tender out?” It’s a platform being developed by Infosys. “Shouldn’t it be responsible for the testing of the product?” he asked. The two RFPs inadvertently raised the issue of accountability.Whose head is on the line if things go wrong: GSTN, Infosys, or GSPs who are still awaiting the APIs? “Contractually, if there is any failure, it will be seen as a failure of Infosys,” says the source in Delhi. But so much has changed from the September of 2015, when it won the MSP contract. And the answers aren’t so easy, even for a government that envisaged rolling out GST in April 2017.“With this moving challenge, it’s hard on Infosys as well,” says the first GSP cited. “The delay in government decisions () has repercussions on the potential impact of starting date. In these circumstances, pushing the GST-returns filing date to September has been the best way forward. (But) We will have teething problems,” says the source in Delhi.To the credit of GSTN and Infosys, they have maintained a united front. The software professionals of the two companies virtually work out of each other’s laptops, says a GSP in jest. “They are like one,” and sing from the same song-sheet. (Infosys declined to participate in this story, diverting ET’s questions to GSTN.)When GSP queries to GSTN get resolved quickly, it’s not just because of the young engineers at GSTN but also the systems set up by Infosys. In January, chief operating office Pravin Rao told the media at a press conference: “We are working closely with the GSTN on the timeline.”By April, Infosys had trained about 2,000 tax officials on the system on a train-the-trainer mode. “We are ferociously working on the software and software in varying stages of development and software milestones. We are progressing on the assumption that July 1st is the go-live day,” Rao told journalists in April.Infosys had put skin in the game early on. “They put their teams together, invested on hardware, built data centres, paid for application licences, developed applications,” says the source in Delhi, adding that it knew fully well that GSTN is not going to be a fixed functionality requirement. “It was going to be floating and changing.”In 2016, the government and Infosys were bracing for a 1 April 2017 roll-out, though the GST legislations would come to be passed only then.As a service provider, the wait for Infosys would prove expensive because of the resources deployed. Binod Hampapur, global head of talent & technology operations at Infosys, told journalists in April that the payments are as per contracts.“We are well on our way,” he added. But Infosys’ role as a program manager has come to be questioned, especially on the APIs front which is GSTN’s preserve. Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy tweeted on 18 June: ‘Has Infosys announced that GSTN will not be ready before July 1.Who is accountable for this if true?’ Infosys has stayed calm. At the 24 June annual general meeting, chief executive of the country’s second largest IT-services exporter Vishal Sikka told shareholders that GST is one of the largest open source deployments. “The system can handle 60,000 transactions a second.” It belied the pressure to meet timelines.The June 9 workshop was organised to alleviate GSPs’ concerns on timelines, as their clients had concerns too about compliance. But there was a new concern: the offline tool.Kumar of GSTN says the original inroads into GST for taxpayers were of three types. “First, you can directly go to the portal and upload: log in and you can start uploading. Second, you can choose the offline tool and upload. Third, if you want other functionalities like accounting, inventory management, and reconciliation, we brought the concept of GSP – for those taxpayers who want end-to-end responsibilities,” he explains.To this end, GSTN had built a JAVA-based tool, an app that it had released for beta testing. “That was based on the December rules. Now that we have updated, it will be released very soon in the new format,” he says, adding that based on feedback, some taxpayers who wanted to upload electronic invoices directly on the GST portal wanted an end-to-end Excel tool. Hence, the RFP.The source in Delhi says: “Over time, it has been felt GSPs and ASPs are not ready—an alternative model is needed. ‘We need Excel tool’.” Obviously, this surprised the GSPs who have been waiting for the APIs, but will now see a direct tool available on the GST portal for taxpaying businesses.Its intent has been to address clusters of distributors (especially in small towns). This was based on findings of an initial test-sample of 30-odd large companies in the value chain whose distributors may not even have this covered through GSPs and application service providers (ASPs) who will work with GSPs. This surprised two GSPs ET spoke to.It was discussed on June 9. “All of a sudden, the government says, ‘Go to GSTN through a GSP or on your own.’ For people on their own, they have created XL utility. You don’t need an ASP or GSP.”According to a GSTN official, the offline tool will be available before 15 July. “Infosys is doing it, and it will be available. We had used it in beta testing, and some changes are being made because of slight changes in the returns formats.”According to a ministry of finance press release on June 10, it will be relevant for data on invoices (business to business), exports, supplies to consumers etc, which are required to create GSTR-1 (Outward Supply Return), can be entered in an excel sheet in offline mode (without being connected to Internet). “At desired interval the tool can be run to upload all such data on the portal. Only while uploading the data on GST portal, internet connectivity will be required. It can upload data of 19,000 invoices in one go and the size of file prepared by the tool will be 5 MB,” the release stated.The portal functions as the front-end of the overall GST IT ecosystem. The IT systems of Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) and state tax departments handle tax administration functions such as registration approval, assessment, audit, adjudication and so on. GSTN has been working with CBEC and states for ensuring mutual interaction between the front-end operated by GSTN and the back-ends of the tax administrations—managed by Infosys.A GSTN official says there aren’t major delays from Infosys’ end. “Forms and policies are changing so many times, it takes time to write or change any code. But everything is under control and are systems are already live, that is proof enough that we are ready.” But where does that leave the GSPs? “All (taxpaying businesses) won’t be using the same application to upload,” says the source from Delhi who has seen the GSTN from its early days.“The GSTN is giving the format of data to be uploaded, so all options are left open for the end taxpayer. This is operationally easier, and they (GSPs) can build applications in the manner that suits them for the clients and themselves.” It’s the political circumstances that have led to this, he adds.GSTN is clear about one thing: the immediate priority is ‘tax collection’. “If taxpayers have self-assessment ready, they need not worry about applications, API. Technology is in the area of ‘reconciliation’— not ‘tax computation’. That may take five months to operationalise,” says the source in Delhi.Meanwhile, GSPs will have to wait for the APIs to be released, do beta testing, and take their on-boarded customers onto GST’s portal on 5 September.“The new live APIs will also be released very soon, so that they can start testing on our sandbox,” Prakash Kumar told ET. “All the releases (until now) have been done on the GSTN’s developer portal.”One thing is for sure: the spotlight about GSTN has moved from a platform approach for GSPs to thrive to enabling tax collections.