The Department of Governance Reforms, Punjab, is entrusted with the task of promoting the portfolio of IT in the State and has undertaken a number of projects that have made life easier for people right up to the village level besides improving work environment in government offices, writes Priya Yadav of Elets News Network (ENN)
Punjab Government is putting the emerging technological innovation like Internet, websites and mobile phones to appropriate use to deliver information about government services to citizens. The State Government is making governmental functioning and process more transparent and accessible upto the grassroot level.
Punjab State Wide Area Network (PAWAN) is a converged Fiber network for data, voice and video communications throughout the State. It has a dedicated State-owned Fiber network infrastructure to connect government o“ces at state, district and block levels. It is designed to cater to the governance, information and communication requirements of the entire State. A total of 193 point of presence has been created throughout Punjab, each district and sub division are made into headquarters. The State headquarter has been connected with district head quarter with a bandwidth of 16 Mbps on optical Fiber cable, while district headquarter has been connected with subdivision head quarter with bandwidth of 4/2 Mbps.
PAWAN Cyber Safe
The dedicated State-owned network infrastructure PAWAN can be shared by all government departments, boards and corporations. It is a secure closed user group with capability of facing external intrusions and cyber attacks. Once PAWAN is connected with State Data Centre (SDC), it will lead to better integration of services provided by various government departments besides a huge cost savings due to use of PAWAN hardware at state and district head quarters.
The State will be upgrading vertical bandwidth of PAWAN from 16 Mbps to 24 Mbps for state to district head quarter and 2Mbps to 4 Mbps for district to block head quarters. Also, there will be upgradation of links between district head quarters to block head quarters from copper to optical Fibre cable.There will be connectivity of 139 o“ces of all departments, boards, corporations and commissions of Punjab Government as also connectivity of 1000-1500 o“ces under eDistrict state wide roll out project.
Web Suwidha helping citizens
Web Suwidha a single user friendly window disposal and helpline for applicants is a project, which has been implemented across the State of Punjab in all 22 districts. The Web enablement of Suwidha soware has been done for anywhere access of the application and centralised monitoring of citizen service delivery under Web SUWIDHA project. It is implemented as centralised application with centralised database and requires minimum conguration to operate. It is more secure, uniform across the State having facility to generate State level MIS, easy to upgrade with better administrative control.
The dedicated State-owned network infrastructure PAWAN can be shared by all government departments, boards and corporations. It is a secure closed user group with capability of facing external intrusions and cyber attacks. Once PAWAN is connected with the State Data Centre (SDC), it will lead to better integration of services
The data centre hardware for Web SUWIDHA has been installed in temporary state data centre at Mahatma Gandhi State Institute of Public Administration (MGSIPA), Chandigarh and soware development has been completed by NIC Punjab. The project has gone live on December 23, 2013.
The project has led to standardisation of outputs and services across all districts. More than 500 citizen services are being delivered through this project. Approximately, three lakh citizen requests per month are being processed through Web SUWIDHA.
Fard Kendras
Punjab Land Record Society (PLRS) was formed by department of revenue with the objective of computerising land records and makes these accessible to the citizens. The society has set up 163 FARD Kendra’s in Public Private Partnership (PPP) to facilitate the citizens to collect their documents across the counter aer paying nominal fee. Records of Rights of about 12780 villages have been computerised. The data of all 22 districts has already been put on the website for public access. Currently, citizens can get the copy of FARD across the counter by paying a very nominal fee on the same counter. PLRS is planning to deliver more land record services through these Kendra’s in future.