The state government on Thursday decided to enhance the capacity of Bihar State Electronics Development Corporation, popular as Beltron - the main IT agency for the government - get a mega data storage centre, and pay special attention to cyber security.

The move indicated the state was waking up after decades of neglect to development of information technology (IT).

The state is also going to hold an 'investors meet' on September 14 to attract big players to establish IT industries. Around 100 acres of land at Rajgir and 25 acres at Bihta have been earmarked as IT parks, while two multi-storied buildings in Patna have been also reserved for the purpose.

The government, which is currently providing free wi-fi in 306 colleges across the state, also decided to expand its features by providing users access to social networking sites like Whatsapp and Facebook.

So far the free wi-fi services were limited to Google and YouTube, though access to music and video download sites, as well as, undesirable ones are blocked. The free wi-fi service will now be extended to public spaces like parks in the coming days. The decisions were taken at a closed-door review meeting of the IT department chaired by chief minister Nitish Kumar in the presence of deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, chief secretary Anjani Kumar Singh, IT department secretary Rahul Singh, additional secretary Manish Kumar and other senior officials.

'Various departments are providing direct benefit transfer (DBT) to the beneficiaries, right from the school students to social security schemes. Aadhaar work is also going on,' Anjani said.

'The meeting chaired by the chief minister has decided to expand information technology in the state. We will enhance the capacity of Beltron and IT-related works of all government departments will be done in its guidance. Data security will also be strengthened.'

Currently, the government data belonging to its various departments are scattered. The Beltron data centre hosts just around 250 terabytes, which is expected to increase phenomenally once storage and security are streamlined. Hosting of data is free for the government departments.

Talking to The Telegraph, Rahul Singh said: 'We will have to put in place a new data centre by 2020. Work on designing it is going on. Security is the most important issue right now and we are upgrading our networks to weed out malwares and bots.'

Rahul added that free wi-fi will be provided at Eco Park and other such public places.