AP information technology secretary R Chandrashekhar told The Financial Express that the state government approved the joint venture on January 22 while an agreement will be signed in February. The first roll out of services will be in four months while full services for all core applications will be possible within nine months.

"The JV company will provide high priority and visibility applications with maximum impact with an emphasis on citizen focus," Chandrashekhar said. Areas of application developmentwill be government-government, government-business and government-citizen. Application developments will be coordinated by chief information officer in each department, who will report to the department of IT, he added.

Chandrashekhar said APVAN has selected eight core applications for the initial phase which includes utility bill payments, transport licences and registration, land registration, commercial taxes, procurement, employment exchanges and road transport corporation.

Chandrashekhar said the AP government will also sign a build-own-operate (BOO) agreement with United Telecom Ltd on February 5 for setting up the AP State Wide Area Network (APSWAN). It will be implemented by May.

He said under the APSWAN, a backbone network for communications (data, voice and video) will be provided. At present, backbone with a capacity of 2 Mbps fibre optic link between Hyderabad and district headquarters has been provided and it will be extended to all mandal headquarters and villages which will ultimatelyconnect all government offices and undertakings network.APSWAN will support wide range of multi-media applications including distance and distributed learning models of education. "The government aims at a higher degree of internet penetration through cable TV and set top boxes," Chandrashekhar said.Chandrashekhar said the state government headed by the chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu will adopt a rational and transparent approach for participation of organisations with diverse skills in the application development.