National e-gov plan may get Rs 1,500-cr investment

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Chandigarh, Feb 7: The budget this year might bring investments of Rs 1,500 crore for the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). In 2007 about Rs 1,300 crore were set aside for the same. Aiming to take information and communication technologies to the masses, various states are gearing up to implement the national e-governance plan. As per the Centre estimates, most of the states will be able to launch the state wide area networks (Swan), common service centres (CSC) and data centers between December 2008 and March 2009. The government had approved state data centre scheme in January with a total outlay of Rs.1,623 crore and capacity building schemes with Rs.313 crore. The Swans had already been approved with an outlay of Rs.3,334 crore and common services centers scheme was also approved with Rs 5,742 crore.

Here to attend the two-day 11th National Conference on e-governance, Thiru A Raja, minister of communication and information technology told media persons that the success of e-governance initiatives would be judged mainly by the benefits it brings to the common man. "The NeGP, adopted by the Central government as a major policy initiative, has the potential to transform the socio-economic landscape of rural India. The setting up of one lakh common services centres in six lakh villages across India would bring convenient services to the doorstep of the citizens in both urban and rural areas. These centres would be broadband and Internet enabled and would be linked to various government departments at the backend through Swan and state data centres," he said.

Expanding upon the current NeGP, R Chandrashekhar, additional secretary, GoI ministry of communications and IT said, "About 72,000 CSCs will be assigned to private agencies by March end and they will take 12 months to get commissioned. At present about 5,000 CSCs are operational across the country. Swans have already been sanctioned to all the states and by December end about 20 states will have Swans operational. At present four states namely Haryana, Himachal, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand have implemented Swan."