Date:04/08/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/04/stories/2008080459390700.htm

Tamil Nadu

Nod for setting up Data Centre

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: The State government has accorded administrative sanction for establishment of a Data Centre in the State and has appointed Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) as the implementing agency.

The first data centre was established at Perungudi by ELCOT that had invested around Rs. 12 crore from its internal accruals. The data centre has two mainframe servers.

According to a Government Order issued on Tuesday, the new data centre costing Rs. 55.80 crore will be funded by the Centre, spread over a period of five years. Department of Information Technology will invest Rs. 18.41 crore, while Rs. 37.39 crore will be met through Additional Central Assistance for National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) provision of Planning Commission.

Under NeGP, it is proposed to create State Data Centres for the States to consolidate services, applications and infrastructure to provide efficient electronic delivery of Government to Government (G2G), Government to Citizen (G2C) and Government to Business (G2B) services.

These services can be rendered by the States through common delivery platform seamlessly supported by core connectivity infrastructure such as State Wide Area Network and Common Service Centre connectivity that would be extended up to village level.

The Data Centre would provide many functionalities and some of the key functionalities are central repository of the State, secure data storage, online delivery of services, citizen information, citizen services portal, state intranet portal, disaster recovery, remote management and service integration.