The Hindu Business Line : Maharashtra chalks out plan for improving IT services

Citizen services, tackling the e-governance challenge and rolling out the State Wide Area Network seem to be what is on the agenda for the State for bettering information technology services.

Talking to presspersons at the Maharashtra IT 2007 function, Mr Arvind Jain, Secretary, IT, Maharashtra Government, said for the State Wide Area Network, for which tenders were opened in December last, the technical evaluation is on.About six players — GTL, UTL, Spanco, TCS, HCL and CMC— are in the fray. The Rs 180-crore project, which is on BOOT basis, was conceived in July 2006. It aims to connect Government bodies from approximately 30,000 villages across 36 districts to Mumbai. He said the work, when awarded, could be completed within 15 months' time. PricewaterhouseCoopers is lead consultant to the State Government on the project.

The Maharashtra State Wide Area Network was conceived by the Centre, and is a part of its national e-governance plan.

Asked about the Microsoft plan to enter the State, Mr Arvind said that the decision was yet to be taken. The State was facing competition from other States which also wanted Microsoft to set shop.

Wooing other players

Mr Arvind said the State Government was also wooing players such as IBM, HP and Lenovoto set up units in the State.

Mr Rohit Kumar, Country Head-Public Sector, Microsoft India, answering queries on e-governance said that the biggest challenge was to keep pace with development. He said speedy decision-making was also important. Citizen services will be rolled out in Maharashtra in a phased manner, he said.

Mr Satish Kaushal, Country Manager- Government, Software Group, IBM India, said the challenge in e-governance was to take the Government and business services to the last consumer and to provide services at his place.

"This is a tall order and requires infrastructure so that everybody can have access to information,'' he added.

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Maharashtra chalks out plan for improving IT services