CONNECTing via SWAN

From computerizing the various government departments in the state, the move

today is to connect all these departments, so that there is more efficient

transfer of data. State Wide Area Network (SWAN) is the next big step that the

individual states in India are undertaking. This was disclosed by the

dignitaries of various state government at Connect 2004, the annual ICT show of

Tamil Nadu.

Government of Tamil Nadu minister of state for law and IT D Jayakumar in his

inaugural address announced that the Tamil Nadu SWAN would be installed

throughout the state at a cost of nearly Rs 100 crore.

Similarly, the Karnataka government is also planning a SWAN for the state at

an estimated cost of Rs 170 crore.

Additionally, the state is working at BangaloreOne, a citizen centric portal,

where all the public utilities will function under one roof. The WAN planned for

the state would extend upto the taluk level, where there would be WAN control

rooms at the state headquarters, all district headquarters and all taluk

headquarters. The net-work would provide audio (Internet phone), video and data

as well.

Government of West Bengal IT department principal secretary GD Gautama also

stressed on the need for integrating all the government services on a common

platform to be accessed by the citizens. He was speaking at the panel discussion

on 'e-Governance Opportunities in States'.

Towards this program, the government is launching the West Bengal State Wide

Area Network (WBSWAN) to con-nect the state headquarters with the district

headquarters in the first phase.

"We plan to extend WBS-WAN upto the Gram Panchayat level," added

Gautama. Besi-des the government is also planning for a G2C portal-www.wbgov.com.

Kerala was the first state to set up a software park way in 1986. But

somewhere down the line it lost the focus, "being an innovator doesn't

always make you a leader," opined Govern-ment of Kerala deputy secre-tary-IT

Anand Singh.

As far as e-governance is concerned, the state is moving slow, to learn from

others experience. Accordingly, it has also realized the potential of setting

the state network to reach out to the residents of the state.

"We are setting up network connecting district head-quarters to the

blocks in each district, by merging with the Akshaya e-kendrams,"

delinea-ted Singh. Akshya, is an e-literacy campaign started in Malapurram

district in Kerala, where the government had set nearly 600 e-kendrams (centers)

for promoting e-literacy. Today, nearly 400 Akshaya e-kendrams are transformed

into IT related enterprises. The government intends to set up nearly 6,000

centers through out the state at a capex of Rs 180 crore.

Pondicherry IT director V Prithviraj too shared the state's plan for

setting up Pondicherry State WAN (PSWAN), where all the applications will be

hosted out of a data center and will be accessed through a WAN.

Andhra Pradesh, which already has started working on this initiative, is

looking at providing broadband connecti-vity to villages, at a total capex of Rs

600 crore, informed And-hra Pradesh Technology Servi-ces MD Randeep Sudan.

"If this network is set, it will supp-ort all government application, where

we can pump in a whole lot of information. It will be an information society per

se," he added.

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