The Andhra Pradesh government has awarded the State Wide Area Network (Swan) project to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country's largest information technology company, on a five-year build, own, operate and transfer (Boot) model.
The proposed Swan project will enable the state government to start and run various e-governance projects and citizen services. It is expected to bring about significant efficiencies in government-to-government (G2G) and government-to-citizen (G2C) services of the state.
According to TCS, the Swan project is the largest of its kind in the country and will be rolled out in a year. It will then maintain it for five years. This is the fourth Swan project it has bagged in a row. The IT company is also implementing Swan projects in Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Bihar.
“This ambitious APSwan project is yet another initiative of the state government to take a wide array of government services to the common man in the remotest corner of the state,” Sameer Sharma, IT secretary and chairman of Andhra Pradesh Technology Services (APTS), stated in a release on Wednesday.
APTS managing director, Sanjay Kumar, said the project envisaged connecting the state capital with 1,088 mandal and 23 district headquarters. Once the project is commissioned, the network would enable the state government to have video conferencing facility across government offices enabling the employees to communicate and conference with each other through voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phones. Besides reducing government phone bill considerably, the project would be a backbone for various e-governance applications in the areas of road transport, healthcare, education and municipality services.
TCS vice president, Tanmoy Chakrabarty, stated that the company would lay a statewide network of IT infrastructure and establish common service centres for citizens to take advantage of e-government services delivered at their doorstep. TCS would set up a Network Operations Centre and helpdesk for round-the-clock monitoring of the facility and services.
Even in the past, TCS has worked with the state government in implementing e-government projects pertaining to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Arogyasri, APonline and value-added tax.
