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Consumers in rural areas could get access to online services such as matrimonial Web sites, job portals, online examination, tele-medicine, Internet protocol television and video conferencing.
The Government is making a blueprint to make these services available to villages through the Rs 20,000-crore National Optical Fibre cable network.
10 services
The Department of Electronics and Information Technology’s (DeitY) committee has shortlisted 10 such services in its meeting recently identified for Government to Citizen (G2C) and Business to Consumer (B2C) services to be made available at the panchayats.
Other services include e-district, data digitisation, land records, cloud-based application to support field functionaries, e-learning, e-Commerce, and online portal for common services centres. The G2C services would be offered by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, while the B2C would be offered by private telecom companies or Internet service providers, an internal Government note, seen by Business Line, stated.
This is part of the National Optical Fibre Network project for offering broadband connectivity to 2.5 lakh panchayats in the country for which the DoT last year had approved Rs 20,000 crore. The project will be funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund and will be completed by 2014-15 through special purpose vehicles.
However, procedural delays have delayed the project by 6 months. The cable network is now expected to be operational only by end of 2013 after which these services will be pushed onto it.
The committee has decided that the access devices will be deployed at various institutions such as schools, hospitals and offices and would be under responsibility of respective Ministries and State Governments.
For the pilot project, DeitY will fund the project. However, the main projects will be funded by respective Ministries or Departments and State Governments. DeitY will initiate training and involvement of local people for operations and maintenance of IT network, development of local content and services.
Pilot phase
The committee has recommended provision of one IT operator at panchayat level and one IT manager at the block level. During the pilot phase, this will be provided by DeitY for one year and subsequently, manpower would be provisioned by the state Governments.
For the pilot phase, computers, UPS, Web-cams and other IT related components would be procured by DeitY through National Informatics Centre Services Incorporation.
Bharat Broadband Network Ltd has been recommended for taking responsibility for extending the connectivity from block to panchayats and horizontal connectivity through wireless technology of Centre for Development of Telematics, the note added.
> ronendrasingh.s @thehindu.co.in
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