The pace of roll out of the Common Service Centres (CSCs) has been slower in Orissa compared to its neighbouring states in the eastern region like Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal.
Out of 8558 CSCs to be set up in Orissa, only 4851 centres have come up by the end of February, a success rate of 56.68 per cent. This does not compare favourably with the other states of the eastern region like Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal which have achieved a success rate of 99.8 per cent, 73.3 per cent and 71.48 per cent respectively, according to the data released by the Department of Information Technology (DIT) of the Government of India. While Jharkhand has almost clocked a 100 per cent success rate by rolling out 4556 out of 4562 CSCs, Bihar has set up 6204 such centres out of the targeted 8463 centres by the end of February 2010.
In West Bengal, 4859 CSCs have come up by the same period out of the targeted 6797. It may be noted that the success rate of Orissa in setting up these CSCs is also marginally less than the national average of 57.79 per cent.
Of the 122,981 CSCs set to be established in more than six lakh villages across 28 states across the country, 71078 centres have been set up February-end. For Orissa, the DIT has approved an outlay of Rs 67.86 crore for setting up of the CSCs, out of which Rs 16.86 crore has been released (as on January 8, 2010). The CSCs are being set up as per the CSC scheme under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of the Government of India. The scheme envisions CSCs as the front-end delivery points for the government, private and social sector services to the rural citizens of India in an integrated manner.
The CSCs are to be leveraged for various services under the flagship schemes of the Government of India like National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA). Meanwhile, Orissa is among the 20 states of the country which have implemented the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) by the end of March 2010.
This project is being executed by the Orissa Computer Application Centre (OCAC), the technical directorate of the state IT department. The DIT has approved an outlay of Rs 95.64 crore for the SWAN project in Orissa out of which Rs 19.13 croee has been released (as on January 8, 2010). Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) would provide bandwidth services for the implementation of the SWAN project in the state. BSNL would provide dedicated leased lines to connect the state headquarter in Bhubaneswar with all the district headquarters and the block headquarters.