Ranchi, Oct. 25: The ambitious IT project to link government offices till block levels, Jharkhand information and communication network (JharNet), will be ready by June 2006.
The state government today signed an agreement to establish JharNet with Bangalore-based United Telecom Limited that aims at creating an efficient state-wide communication and information network.
Information technology principal secretary, R.S. Sharma, said JharNet will link all government offices up to block levels through a secure, reliable and high bandwidth network. About 4,500 offices will be connected through the network, he added.
Sharma said the UTL will set up the network the districts in coming four months and the blocks by another four months from today.
The government is also working on JharNet 2 project that aims to network all the villages, he said.
The network is being established on a modified ?build, own, operate and transfer? basis for a period of five years, Sharma said.
The UTL will establish the JharNet by purchasing the equipment and operate the system, but the government will give a quarterly guaranteed revenue of Rs 4.5 crore to it. The government will contribute about Rs 100 crore in five years to the UTL, but the vendor will be bound to provide quality services, he said.
There is a strict service level agreement (SLA) that prescribes minimum standards of uptime of the networks, Sharma said.
Any fall in this uptime, which is up to 99.99 per cent in the districts and 99 per cent in blocks attracts heavy penalties on the operator, he said. The SLA stipulates the network can be down for less than 8 hours in a year, Sharma said.
The government will also appoint a third party inspector to quantify the downtime of the network to charge penalties from the vendor, Sharma said.
The IT secretary said Gujarat is able to pay its third party inspector from the fines collected by the vendor. Since the SLA stipulates up to 99.99 per cent uptime, the vendor will ensure quality services in the state, he added.
When ready, the network will carry all e-governance applications and will work as an effective carrier for delivery of information and services to the public. All the existing applications like treasury, transport, commercial taxes, registration, land records, employment exchange and municipalities will be loaded on to this network, Sharma said.
A government of India enterprise, TCIL was appointed by the state government as consultant of the project being funded by the central government.
The vendor UTIL was selected through an open, transparent and competitive process, Sharma said. The other bidders were Indian Telephones Limited and Wipro, he said. The agreement was signed in the presence of chief minister Arjun Munda.
