TN allocates Rs. 100 crore to improve IT infrastructure

CHENNAI, INDIA: To bring in an improvement in public administration, Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister, J Jayalalitha has declared that the Tamil Nadu Government will provide Rs. 100 crore to Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu.

This initiative is aimed at improving IT infrastructure in the government departments. Besides that, the state government is planning to set up an ‘e-governance fund' and establish an IT cadre to improve the delivery of various government services.

Out of the Rs. 100 crore allocated to the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu, Rs. 50 crore will be used to fund the second phase expansion of IT network to more government offices. Remaining funds will be used for creating ‘redundant connectivity' (for Rs. 10 crore) and ‘horizontal connectivity' (for Rs. 40 crore), as declared by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

Horizontal connectivity will be required for the expansion of e-governance projects and the redundant connectivity will act as a backup, incase the existing network faces any breakdown. The State Wide Area Network (SWAN) of Tamil Nadu links all the government departments to provide voice, data, Internet and audio-visual link.

With over 708 points-of-presence provided by the State-run Electronics Corporation, the government offices, including district headquarters and 1,853 government offices can be linked together.

Rs 11 crore has been allocated for the establishment of a cloud computing facility at the State data centre. "Enhancing the computing capacity of various departments will also enable government departments get IT hardware and software capacity and save on costs," a Hindu Business Line report quoted Jayalalitha, as saying.

"A common geographical database will be created at Rs six crore for the use of various departments that need spatial and non-spatial information," she added.