But despite the setback, West Bengal has continued building its Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and registered growth between 20 to 25 per cent in software export even at the time of economic slowdown. Siddharth, Principal Secretary to the Government of West Bengal, Department of Information Technology and Biotechnology, in an interaction with Prasoon Srivastava of CIOL gives a broader picture of the development taking place in its IT sector and e-governance. Excerpts: What is the overall scenario of the developments taking place in West Bengal's IT sector? Every other day we keep getting information about new projects. I would clarify in the beginning that in the so-called slump or economic slowdown, there were no pink slips served since last September in our state to the IT professionals. There was no stopping of employment, only some of the companies in our state stopped fresh recruitment. As far as the growth rate of software exports is concerned, it was negative in most of the places but we registered growth between 20 to 25 per cent. Which are the new projects that are likely to come up in the IT sector of state? Aditya Birla group has announced to start service in the state with 200 people. They will support services of Idea and Vodafone. It has further plans to increase workforce to 1000 by September 1. IBM Daksh also wants to increase its footprint here in tier-2 cities. We are in discussion with them. They have asked for 50,000 square feet space from us. As soon as we give them this space, they would immediately start their service. We are working on to finalize this space. What are you doing to boost infrastructure for investment of IT companies in the state? We had conducted a study by PriceWaterhouse Coopers to identify satellite area of the state that has potential for IT investments. In that survey, it came out with names of Durgapur, Silliguri, Kharagpur, Kalyani and Haldia. We are going to have advanced IT parks at Kharagpur, Durgapur and Silliguri. West Bengal Electronics Industry Development Corporation Limited (Webel), the commercial arm of the state, has already started construction of the IT park. In fact, Silliguri IT Park will be ready by this September or October. Development at Durgapur is also going on with good pace and we expect to complete it by this year end or first quarter of next year. At Kharagpur also Webel will be developing IT park. There is already a private initiative in Haldia. It is by STV group and they have plans to make the tallest IT building in the country at Haldia which will have 35 stories. Foundation stone had already been laid. In Kalyani we have 100 acres of land where Webel is going to develop SEZ. It will be on public private partnership (PPP) mode. Beside Webel initiative the local area development authorities like Asansol Durgapur Development Authority and Silliguri Jalpaigui Development Authority have also floated tenders on PPP model. Shapoorji Pallonji had been selected for Durgapur IT Park and Infinity had been selected for IT Park at Silliguri. In Kalyani you had selected three companies - Mahindra Lifespace, Raheja Group and Paharpur Cooling Towers for partnership but on pre-bid meeting only Paharpur Cooling Towers turned up. What was the reason for this? The other two companies did not come for some other reason but we are in touch with them. We are working out the way we can build this partnership. The date for finalizing this partnership is this July 9. By when do you expect Haldia IT park to get completed? That we cannot say, as it is a private initiative. Only the land had been given from the Haldia Development Authority. What is the implementation of e-governance projects in the state? We are among the leaders when it comes to State Wide Area Network (SWAN) implementation. We have a pilot project in Burdwan where we have gone up to gram panchayat level. In addition to district headquarters (DHQ), sub-division, blocks, we have already connected 277 gram panchayats. Now we are rolling out this kind of connectivity for gram panchayats across the state. How many departments have been linked with SWAN? There are 15 mission mode project (MMP) departments but all departments are taking initiatives in their own way. E-governance is not only connecting departments. It means that the way with the help of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools one can provide service which are more transparent and enable government to provide service at door step of people. It begins with digitalization of data so that you are in a position to deliver services. We are carrying out computerization and digitalization work in all the departments. MMP departments have gone ahead. Some of the departments which are actively working for e-governance are now coming up with pilot projects like e-registration. Our first objective is to create back-end support by computerization. Some departments have gone for PPP model and selected vendors to maintain their computer network. This means only computerization is taking place across the state... No. We are also providing services. We have started electronic registration in our state. All the 84 treasury department offices have been connected. Our entire budget exercise is automated. Sales Tax Department has also linked offices so that way bills, checking at post etc. can be done in short time. The Tourism Department provides most of the facilities like booking of hotel and information about tourist places online. We have rolled out more than 4000 CSCs out of 7697. Then there are some services that are based on initiative of local authority and service providers. Will you be able to meet SWAN implementation timeline of August 2009? As I said, we have almost completed our work. There are 7 or 8 sites where work is due. In places like Darjeeling we had political tension. Hence it was not safe for our people to go physically there and work. There are some places where Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has technical problem. In places like these we are unable to activate point-of-presence (PoP). Else all over state we have rolled out 368 PoPs. West Bengal Government was to introduce smart card to replace the current ration card. What is the status of this project at present? It is happening. We are running pilots in our e-districts. Smart card based ration card is part of our project in these e-districts. Once it is successful, we will replicate all ration cards across state with this new ration card. Does the concept of this smart card have any similarity with the proposed Unique Identity (UID) card of the Government of India? No, this card will be limited to service of food department. We are aware that UID is coming up. Therefore, we have not made this new ration card complicated. What are the new initiatives that your department has taken and how is it different from that of the IT department of other states? We have floated two societies. One is for propagation of Open Source called Institute of Open Technology Application (IOTA) and other is for promotion of Bengali under the name of Society for Natural Language Technology Research (SNLTR). The idea behind IOTA is to tell people about open source, train students, academicians and other people whoever is interested in open source. Help people in migrating from proprietary software to open source. Through SNLTR we have developed Unicode for Bengali script. This society has taken responsibility to digitalize entire work of Rabindranath Tagore and other prominent writer and poets. On its website we have provided translation tool which helps people in translating text in Bengali to English and vice-versa. When do you plan to complete digitalization of all the state departments? I will not be able to give any time line for this. It is an ongoing process. Our job is to provide support to the departments, help them, request them and tell about government schemes. Then it is for the respective departments to take initiatives. How do you conceptualize any project? Webel has some in-house expertise. Tele-medicine and IT-based Braille education was developed by Webel in collaboration with IIT Kharagpur. We give lot of importance to interaction with academia.
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