UKSWAN ( Uttarakhand State Wide Area Network ) :

The project titled Uttarakhand State Wide Area Network (USWAN) is will provide a reliable, resilient and a secure backbone to meet the information requirements and associated services.

The State of Uttarakhand  being an IT Hub has done exceptionally well in rolling out large e-Governance applications across the state up to the block level. Large number of Government to citizens' initiatives (G2C),Government to Government (G2G) and Government to Business (G2B) projects are operational.

State Wide Area Network (SWAN) :

The Nation wide SWAN Scheme for 29 States & 6 Union Territories, at an estimated of Rs. 3334 Crores was approved by Govt. of India in March 2005 to set up State Wide Area Networks (SWAN) interconnecting each State/UT Head Quarter with District Headquarter and below each District Headquarter with the block Headquarter with minimum 2Mbps Lease Line.

The objective of the scheme is to create a secure close user group (CUG) Govt. network for the purpose of delivering G2G and G2C services.

The duration of project of 5 years has been completed and now the project has been handed over to State Govt. Therefore now, ITDA has been nominated as the implementing agency for the project by the State Govt. From 1 July 2015 onwards all the project activities are being carried out by ITDA (Information Technology Development Agency ).

Current Status :

UKSWAN network is operational through 133 Point of Presence (PoPs) as vertical connectivity upto Block / Tehsil level. Under UKSWAN, 10 Mbps Lease Line between State Headquarter (SHQ) to District Headquarters (DHQs) and 02 Mbps Lease line from District Headquarters (DHQs) to Tehsil/Blocks (THQ/BHQ) is being provided through BSNL. SWAN equipment are End of Life & End of Support. Presently approx. 1332 offices have been connected through horizontal SWAN connectivity. Apart from this, National Knowledge Network (NKN) has also been integrated with UKSWAN upto district level except DHQ Dehradun. State Government has approved Bandwidth upgradation from 10 Mbps/34 Mbps at 113 THQ/BHQ PoP and order has been placed on BSNL for the same and 105 sites have been upgraded by BSNL. GSTN is being routed through UKSWAN, therefore, BSNL has requested to expedite and complete upgradation work immediately.

SWAN being a technology-intensive project, the Scheme provides for support funding for consulting assistance for the States / UTs intending to implement the Scheme. Under the Scheme, the States / UTs have been advised to hire a Technical Consultant, funding for which would come from the DITs share of the individual project outlay. The Technical Consultant would assist the State / UT in all aspects of implementation including conceptualization, project development, bid process management, implementation supervision, network acceptance testing etc.

Some of Projects under it are :

E – Distt. Project :

The e-district project is a state mission mode project run under the e-governance plan, whose main purpose is to computerize the public-centric services. The entire system order in this project has been computerized. The e-district project is a project funded by the Government of India, in which the services related to registration in the certificate, complaint and information authority, public distribution system, pension, Khatouni, revenue disputes and employment centers have been included. Transfer of all these services will be done through public utility center.

Devi Bhoomi (Computerization of Land Records) :

Uttarakhand government has launched Citizen Centric Land Records Website of Uttarakhand – “Dev-bhoomi” on 9th Nov, 2006 with the objective of making available the entire Land Records Data of all the districts in the state on Internet. With the launch of this website, citizens and mostly farmers from all across the state can view the details of their Khataunies anytime, anywhere on Internet.

The website and the data available on it are in Hindi and searching of Khataunies is made as simple as possible. One can search either by Owner’s name or by Plot/Khata numbers after selecting the concerned village in the Tehsil from the District.

State Data Centre :

Under National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) it is proposed to create State Data Centre(SDC)for state to consolidate services, applications and infrastructure to provide efficient Electronic delivery of G2G, G2C and G2B services. These services can be rendered by the state through common delivery platform seamlessly supported by core connectivity infrastructure such as State wide area Network and Common Service Centre (CSC) connectivity extended upto village level.

SDC would provide many functionalities and some of the key functionalities are Central Repository of the state, secure data storage, online delivery of services, citizen information / services portal, state intranet portal, disaster recovery, remote management and service integration etc. SDC would also provide better operation and management control and minimize overall cost of data management, IT resource management, development and other cost.

Commercial Tax :

In its endeavor to replace the cumbersome manual systems with citizen-centric, serviceoriented processes, and to establish a certain degree of standardization with respect to Commercial Tax (CT) administration, the department carried out a comprehensive automation drive as a Mission Mode Project under the National e-Governance Plan of Government of India. Having a firm belief that Information and Communication Technology can serve as the most potent tool to usher in an era of electronic governance the state government initiated the task of simplifying procedures, making need based, good quality and timely information available to all dealers, and providing services in an efficient and cost-effective way.

Digi Locker :

Digital Locker is a digital wallet for citizen to access their digital documents anytime, anywhere and share it online. This is convenient and time saving. It provides a trusted locker account of a citizen where issuers will issue valid digital documents(e.g. Digital Aadhaar, PAN, Driving License, Registration Certificate of Vehicles, Mark sheets, Caste Certificate, Income Certificate etc.) which are at par with original paper documents.

Citizen can Digitally sign the documents using eSign facility and can share with others.  It also helps to eliminate physical presence of citizens as well as verification of the documents to avail services like loan applications, higher studies, employment.  DigiLocker is aimed at the concept of paperless governance .  It reduces the administrative overhead of Government departments by minimizing the use of paper.   It provides trusted issued documents  to citizen locker .These Issued Documents available via DigiLocker are digitally signed by the issuing agency and  are fetched in real-time directly from the database of the issuing agency.  So all document via DigiLocker authentic and legally valid under Indian laws. It acts as a secure document  exchange platform like payment gateway between trusted issuer and trusted Requester. It also provides a verification module which will allow government agencies to verify data directly from issuers after obtaining user consent for such verification.