Government policy on SWAN soon

Shubhendu Parth & Zia Askari






NEW DELHI: In continuation with its efforts towards implementing national e-governance action plan and to ensure seamless connectivity between various end-points at the block level in a state, the government of India is all set to announce a State Wide Area Network (SWAN) policy.

The policy is likely to be announced by Union Minister for Communications and IT Dayanidhi Maran soon, and would be targeted towards providing a platform to have at least 2 MBPS connectivity at the block level.

According to sources in the ministry, the slated policy is likely to ensure availability of SWAN infrastructure to states that have a minimum of three live e-governance projects at least at the pilot stage, one of them essentially on the WAN.

It may be recalled that while endorsing the National E-Governance Action Plan, the central government had categorically said that for the project to succeed it was important to extend connectivity up to block level through NICNET and SWAN.

The National E-Governance Action Plan for 2003-07 seeks to lay the foundation and provide the impetus for long-term growth of e-governance within the country. The plan also aims at creating the right governance and institutional mechanisms, set up the core infrastructure and policies and implement a number of 'mission mode projects' at the center, state and integrated service levels to create a citizen-centric and business-centric environment for governance.

Putting a major thrust on building basic infrastructure to run e-governance application, the government has already decided to invest close to Rs 170 crore on building infrastructure like WAN connectivity, data centers and other access infrastructure to support all state and central e-governance initiatives.