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Rajasthan plans Rs 150 crore statewide VAN

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DQW Bureau
New Update

Anil Sharma


Jaipur

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The IT savvy Rajasthan Government has drawn out plans for setting up of a statewide Value Added Network (VAN) with private sector assistance. The project is estimated to cost Rs 150 crore.

Rajasthan is one of the front-runner states in India in the use of IT in Government. It is the intention of the State Government to consolidate its efforts and to focus its energies to leverage the benefits of IT for the benefit of its people.

"The VAN of Rajasthan will be a private sector led initiative that will put in place a high speed IT backbone that will cater to the current and future bandwidth requirements of the State," said an official of the State Industries Department.

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"Creation of an IT backbone for the State is a high capital investment venture. Such high capital intensive projects are generally executed on Build, Own and Operate (BOO) and Build, Own, Operate and Transfer (BOOT) methods.

Considering the complexities in executing such a large project, involving high capital and technology inputs as also the fast changing telecom deregulating scenario, the State Government has recommended the development of the network on BOO basis, which involves least investment but at the same time would facilitate the best possible technology."

The official said that a detailed feasibility study undertaken by the State Government has recommended that the project be implemented in three phases. In Phase-I, the Jaipur Network Center (JNC) shall be established, followed by the District Network centers (DNCs) in all the 31 districts. The connectivity between JNC and DNCs shall be through a dedicated 2 MBPS connectivity. In Phase-II, all the 240 blocks/mandals of the State will get connected to their respective DNC.

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The connectivity between the DNC and Block/Mandal Center (BMC) shall be through a dedicated 64 KBPS link. In Phase-III, all the 9,000 villages of the State will get connected to their respective DNC/BMC, he said.

The proposed VAN is expected to facilitate data, voice and video communication among various government departments, public sector enterprises and their district and remote offices. The network will help build a datawarehouse for the top-level decision-makers of the state.

This datawarehouse would be like a virtual digital library of data of statistics and information produced by the government organizations. This library would be accessible to the decision-makers through an information delivery system using appropriate technology.

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In line with the State Government's policy of providing right to information to people, the Government has decided that the network should help to establish information kiosks, which would allow citizens to access the datawarehouse. The VAN or state information highway also proposes to have inter-linkages with essential and emergency services like police, hospitals, fire brigade etc.

This EDI facility will also help in electronically filing income tax and sales tax returns, payment of electricity and telephone bills, challans etc resulting in increased efficiency, reduction in procedures, reduced overheads and improved revenue collection for the government.

The network will provide a private-private interface by providing connectivity within the domain of private users for e-commerce and other such value-added services. The identified users of the VAN are banks, stock exchanges, travel agencies, exporters, transport companies and other such commercial enterprises.

The proposed VAN, the government feels, would bring benefits of state-of-the-art information technology to the state. It will help in pooling the information, economies of scale and the optimal use of resources resulting in efficient and reliable services at a reasonable cost.

(CNS)

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