In a major fillip to e-governance in Jammu and Kashmir, the state is all set to have its State Data Centre (SDC) - a highly reliable and secure infrastructure to host it.

"We will have State Data Centre (SDC). It would be implemented in next three to four months period," Commissioner-Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, J&K Government, M K Dwevedi said.

Dwevedi, who is looking after the project, said "We have already tender against the Request for Proposal (RFP). Five companies have applied recently. Now we are in technical evaluation".

The contracts for the SDC project would be alloted in month of June itself and in next three to four months it would be implemented, he said.

The SDC will enable the state government to setup a highly reliable, shared and secure infrastructure to host state level e-governance applications and deliver Government to Government (G2G), Government to Citizens (G2C), and government to Business (G2B) services electronically.

"It is three tier connectivity, which will bring us in new age of governance electronically," Dwevedi said.

The project costing around Rs 35 crores will render services through common services delivery platform supported by core connectivity infrastructure such as State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and Common Services Centres (CSC).

Meanwhile, the Jammu and Kashmir government has launched another project to connect all its offices through broadband cables and wireless links.

This project is meant to provide easy access to state government data and bring in transparency. The project estimated at a cost of over Rs 60 crores will be completed by August 2012.

"Jammu and Kashmir will have SWAN for e-governance. We have set the process in motion. We will sign a Memorandum of Understand with BSNL soon," Dwevedi said.

An MoU will be signed between S&T department and BSNL, thus officially appointing BSNL as the service provider for connectivity for feasible and non-feasible sites.

A proposal regarding procurement of connectivity equipment for each site has been sent to the Government of India, the Commissioner said.

The SWAN will have 174 points of presence(PoP), including two state level PoPs, 20 district level PoPs and 152 block level PoPs to connect 10 selected departments under e-governance from block level to state level hubs.