West Bengal Govt. unfolds new IT policy

By Our Staff Reporter

CALCUTTA, DEC. 31. The West Bengal Government on Thursday formally announced its policy to transform itself from an ``IT aware'' Government to an ``IT enabled'' government by adopting E- governance appropriately.

The new set of policy framework named as ``Information Technology Policy, 2000'' was released by the Chief Minister Mr. Jyoti Basu, at a meet of Bengali NRI entrepreneurs and professionals organised as part of the 11 day Biswa Banga Sammelan (world meet of Bengalis). The latter was inaugurated in the city on December 29.

According to the policy, framed as per recommendations of a task force on IT, a government-wide electronic information infrastructure would be created ``to simplify service delivery, reduce duplication and improve level and speed of service to public.

Incidentally, the State Government would utilise the vast network of West Bengal State Electricity Board (WBSEB) in creating the communication backbone.

While the department of telecommunication is engaged in laying the optical fibre cables, WBSEB is in the process of setting a state-wide VSAT system. The telecom authorities are also working to commission internodes at all the 17 district head-quarters by January 2000.

So far only four cities (except Calcutta) are provided with the same. The optical fibre cable link between Calcutta and Kharagpur will be in place soon.

To provide high-speed connectivity to a wide range of end-users the State Government will set up a 1,600 km long Statewide network on WBSEB transmission lines.

The network will connect all 17 district headquarters, an additional 10 cities with population of over one lakh, all engineering colleges, medical colleges, universities, industrial growth centres, Falta EPZ and the Indo-Bangla border posts of Petrapole and Hilly.

Further expansion would be met through separate projects, VSAT/VSNL systems and networks on a variety of platforms. Rural locations where 100/50 KV power sub-stations are required for reliable telecom services are also identified.

The use of a telecom backbone would be in the e- governance on which the policy has given maximum stress. The latter will provide citizen - Government interface and bring transparency in its functions.

Though newer areas are being identified which require introduction of IT to start with vehicle registration, land records, birth and death registration, employment exchange, payment of excise duty, sales tax and other local tax, electronic bill payment of water and electricity, work of police in different police stations will be brought under the e-governance. government department and organisations will have e-mail connection as a faster mode of communication.

All important government policies, Acts, rules, regulations, notifications which have a direct bearing on the members of the public would be available on Internet.

The State Government will set up an IT department to coordinate and assist in adopting various IT techniques. All departments will have a chief IT officer to ease the process.Technologies will be purchased from open market. The Zilla Parishads will gradually adopt GIS based planning to establish a district-wide network for fast and efficient data transmission. This network will be suitably coupled with the State-wide network.

The prime motive to the E-governance service is to provide services to the rural Bengal especially to agricultural sector. The latter includes district level weather forecast, price of commodities in all major centres of the state and other states, information on crop disease management and crop loans are on the priority list.

To ensure mass participation Indian language based software tools will be developed. While WEBEL, a state undertaking has been entrusted the job of standardising Bengali key-board and user friendly software for government-public interface, software tools in Nepali or Gurkhali (scheduled language) will be promoted.

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