Union Minister for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) Paban Singh Ghatowar today batted for a more efficient and dedicated 'Project e-governance mission team' to transform it into a developed and an empowered region in the field of e-governance.

Expressing regret that most states in the north-east are 'inadequately equipped in terms of personnel and skill-sets' to push e-governance to a higher level, Ghatowar said the gaps should be identified and addressed accordingly.

He was addressing the North East e-GOV Summit 2012 held at the premises of IIM-Shillong here.

Urging the NE states to complete different e-governance projects like SWAN, state data centre, common services centres, e-Districts and Mission mode projects, Ghatowar said the ultimate objective of these programs of the government is to bring public services closer to citizens home and as articulated in the vision statement of the NeGP (National e-Governance Plan).

He said NeGP comprises of 27 missions mode projects encompassing 10 central missions mode, 10 state mission modes and 7 integrated mission modes spanning multiple ministries and government departments.

The mission modes are banking, central excise and customs, income tax, insurance, national citizen database, passport, immigration, agriculture besides land records, police and other services.

"The state governments are expected to prioritise amongst these projects of the NeGP as they fall within the domain of the state governments," Ghatowar said.

On the ambitious SWAN project in the country, Ghatowar said states in the NE should also prioritise completion of SWAN projects in their respective states.

SWANs which are expected to cover at least 50,000 departmental offices through 1 million route kilometres of communication links, Ghatowar said the project is aimed at ensuring high speed connectivity.

He assured that the ministry would aid states in providing horizontal connectivity to different offices at the district, block and circle level to the interested state governments.

When fully implemented, SWAN would work as a converged backbone network for voice, video and data communication across each states in the country.