Patna: The technology bug has finally bitten the Bihar government, with the state government working on six major e-Governance initiatives worth Rs 160 crore with Tata Consultancy services (TCS).

It all started with the computerisation of offices of state government. The government considers it as a first step towards e-Governance. This has helped citizens to get their work done more efficiently without any hassles.

Giving details of the initiatives, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said that these six initiatives include Comprehensive Treasury Management Information System (CTMIS), Value Added Tax Management Information System (VATMIS), citizen centric portal (Bihar online), Integrated Workflow and Document Management System (IWDMS), BRAIN- data centre and Bihar State Wide Area Network (Bihar-SWAN).

While the state government is looking at initiating the pilot phase of all the six projects in February, it expects to formally launche these in April this year.

The IWDMS would be operational in eight state government offices and secretariat in the first phase while Bihar SWAN will be implemented in four phases and would cover all the 38 districts.

The infrastructure will help the state government extend services like data communication, video conferencing, voice conferencing and e-mail to all the blocks in these districts, he said.

While the state government is spending Rs 125 crore on the SWAN project, it has already set-up a data center at a cost of Rs 19 crore.

Bihar Online- the citizen centric portal would help citizens to get their birth, death and caste certificates in time efficient manner. Also it would help them in other citizen services.
—iGovernment Bureau