Computer service centers to facilitate e-governance

CHENNAI: The Union Government plans to set up computer service centres (CSC) in rural India.

According to this project every six villages would have a CSC. These centres are expected to provide e-governance facilities and information on various topics to the rural population. This would also increase PC penetration in India, said Dayanidhi Maran, Union IT minister.

Unveiling India's first low cost computer 'HCL PC for India', Maran said, “nearly 100 computer service centres are expected to come up in India by the end of 2007 and the Taiwan-based chip products manufactured by Via Technologies would be used for this e-governance projects.”

He added that in a bid to encourage the open-source technology in India, an open-source center would be opened in Chennai.

He also said that the telecom major, Nokia, which is setting up their manufacturing facility in Chennai, has proposed to set up Nokia's Network Operating Center here, which would remotely access/monitor the entire Asian region of Nokia. The Finnish company is soon expected to make a final remark in this regard.