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Govt. outlines ambitions plan to increase broadband

Indiantelevision.com Team

(31 June 2007 8:20 pm)

NEW DELHI: With the current year having been declared as the year of the Broadband by former President A P J Abdul Kalam, Communication and Information Technology minister A Raja has said that about 100,000 Broadband enabled service centers will come up in the country by March 2008 at a total cost of Rs 540 billion.

One center will come up for every six villages with all e-governance services. A sum of Rs 160 billion will be put up by central government and the rest by the private sector under Public Private Partnership (PPP).

Inaugurating the eIndia 2007 Conference here today, the minister said the government was trying to provide basic infrastructure including internet, window Facilitation center and last leg connectivity for implementation of e-governance, but participation of private sector and citizens is a key factor for providing totally transparent services to the public.

The application of IT to government processes, e-governance in short, can have a profound impact-on the efficiency, responsiveness and accountability of government, the minister added.

He said his ministry has wide ranging activities from spreading of IT to masses to ensuring speedy IT led development. With Information and Communication (ICT) at its core, the department of Information Technology (DIT) has initiated the National eGovernance Plan (NeGP).

It is an ambitious programme aimed at improving the quality, accessibility and effectiveness of government services to citizens and businesses with the help of information technology. It is also been used as an effective tool to drive administrative reforms within the government, and can change the perception of people about the government.

In addition, it has created a national IT backbone for fast, reliable and efficient connectivity, data storage and access. NeGP in its current form consists of Mission Mode Projects (MMPs)and Functional components to be executed over a four-year period.

Many states have started preparing detailed project reports for implementation of these Mission Mode Projects. The process for designing Mission Mode Projects have also been initiated and are in the implementation phase currently. For implementing these MMPs, NeGP envisages putting in place a core infrastructure comprising State Wide Area Network (SWAN), Common Service Centres (CSCs) and State Data Centres (SDCs) which shall be used across MMPs for delivering desired services, he added.

Department of Information Technology secretary Jainder Singh also spoke on the meet organized by the Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (CSDMS) whose president M.P.Narayanan also spoke. Representatives of various government departments, and UNDP etc are participating in the four-day Conference.