State extends SWAN to all districts

West Bengal has expanded its state wide area network (SWAN), under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), to all districts, subdivisions and blocks in the state.

West Bengal State Wide Area Network (WBSWAN), the computer networking backbone for the government of West Bengal, will now provide the facility of connecting all the block offices of West Bengal with the districts, subdivisions and state headquarters in Kolkata.

BSNL has been chosen as the bandwidth provider. The expansion project in the state has been approved by the department of information technology, government of India, under the core infrastructure component of NeGP.

According to Debesh Das, state IT minister, this network would help the administration to keep in touch with the remote block offices through video conferencing and closed user group VoIP telephones.

 

“Interchange of information through e-mail and other electronic data interchange tools will make free flow of communications, instantaneous and less expensive,” Das said.

The state also plans to extend the facility subsequently, to field offices of various departments and directorates, whereby the various departments and directorates will be linked to their respective headquarters using the infrastructure. This is also expected to help provide the foundation for the quick implementation of various e-governance projects in the state.

The WBSWAN project was launched in 2001 with funds provided entirely by the government of West Bengal. Initially the network connected the district headquarters to state headquarters in Kolkata over individual two MBPS terrestrial leased line and it was expanded later by including eight more commercially important sub divisions.

So far, this e-governance initiative has enabled software-based video conferencing facility, thus making the network connectivity and governance more cost efficient, and reducing the manhours spent in travel for meetings. The government has plans to extend the facility to all gram panchayats throughout the state in due course.