TN to invest Rs 100 cr in IT infra

The state govt has also announced setting up of an e-governance fund with a corpus of Rs 10 cr

The Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday announced allocating around Rs 100 crore to the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Elcot) to strengthen the IT infrastructure across government departments besides announcing setting up of an e-governance fund with a corpus of Rs 10 crore.

Accordingly, the state plans to utilise the proposed Rs 100 crore to fund a Rs 50-crore second phase expansion of IT network connecting government offices; Rs 10 crore to set up redundant connectivity and the remaining Rs 40 crore for horizontal connectivity. A cloud computing facility will also be created at the state data centre at a cost of Rs 11 crore.

Making a statement in the Assembly, chief minister J Jayalalithaa announced the extension of Tamil Nadu state wide area network (WAN), a dedicated facility for linking government departments to provide voice, data, internet and audio-visual link.

Enhancing the computing capacity across various departments would enable the state to save costs incurred on administrative expenditure.

Currently Elcot with its existing network of 708 points-of-presence plans to utilise the proposed IT infrastructure to facilitate speed and extensive services to the public.

A common geographical database will be created at Rs 6 crore for the use of various departments that need spatial and non-spatial information, she said.