A Government of West Bengal Undertaking

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e-Governance Initiatives:

e-Governance in West Bengal- West Bengal gearing-up for e-Governance

The key objective of e-Governance is to enable West Bengal to transform into a knowledge-driven welfare society with extensive use of IT and ITeS in Governance and in the daily lives of the people of the State

The Government is committed to build a citizen-centric, inclusive and information-driven welfare Society to make the public services available to all sections of the State in a transparent and efficient manner through e-Governance with use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). In this direction, the Government has taken up extensive e-Governance projects and schemes in tune with the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) as well as some State-specific initiatives.

Webel Technology Limited (WTL) is the State Designated Agency (SDA) /State Implementing Authority (SIA) for implementation of Digital India Initiatives (erstwhile National e- Governance Projects (NeGP))

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Major e-Governance initiatives & activities of WTL:
  • Provide Strategic advice and professional support to the various Government Departments for e-Governance
  • Design and monitor implementation
WTL undertakes the complete job of development of a computerized System, right from its inception till the final implementation.

WTL perform:

  • Feasibility and Requirement Study and Analysis
  • Detailed System Study
  • Design of the Computerized System
  • Software Development
  • Website Development
  • Online Application
  • System Implementation
  • West Bengal State Data Centre (WBSDC)
  • West Bengal State Wide Area Network (WBSWAN)
  • WB e-District Mission Mode Project
  • State Portal & Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG)
  • Centralized e-Office
  • m-Governance
  • Crime and Criminal Tracking and Network System (CCTNS)
  • e-Governance initiatives in Commercial Taxes Directorate
  • e-Governance initiatives in Municipalities ( e-Municipalities)
  • e-Governance initiatives in Land & Land Records
  • e-Governance initiatives in Agriculture
  • e-Governance initiatives in Panchayats (e-Panchayats)
  • Capacity Building
  • UIDAI and Other Projects
  • Community Service Centre(CSC)
  • Smart Card
  • Computerization of Govt. Depts.
  • Computerization of Police Networks
  • Centralized Document Management System
  • e-Procurement
  • All other e- Governance Projects of Government of West Bengal

West Bengal State Data Centre (WBSDC)

West Bengal State Data Center (WBSDC) has been developed by the State of West Bengal, which is envisioned as the ‘Shared, reliable and secure infrastructure services centre for hosting and managing the e-Governance Applications of State and its constituent departments’ and the same has been initially developed as a part of Mission Mode Project under National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) (presently known as Digital India) and to ensure adherence to common principles and policies towards realization of the vision. Subsequently SDC has been revamped & augmented using State Fund

The WBSDC is situated at a prime location within Kolkata and it is being continuously revamped with new technologies and upgraded Network & Security devices.

Department of Information Technology and Electronics, Government of West Bengal (DIT&E, GoWB) is the key and core stakeholder of implementation of various Mission Mode Projects under NeGP. As per changes in Rules of Business for e-Governance as per decision of the State Government, Webel Technology Limited (WTL) had been designated as the State Implementing Agency (SIA) towards the support of such implementation and WTL involves in execution of the work related to e- Governance activities as Nodal Agency. A Core Operational Team had been formed with the officers & Technical Experts of WTL for shouldering the responsibility of techno-administrative support of overall SDC operations, management and hosting various departmental applications at SDC.

The WBSDC is the key-supporting element of e-Government Initiatives & businesses for delivering services to the citizens with greater reliability, availability and serviceability of the Government Departments. SDC facilitates consolidation of services, applications and infrastructure. SDC provides many functionalities and some of the key functionalities are Central data repository, Secure Data Storage, Online Delivery of Services, Citizen Information/Services Portal, State Intranet Portal, Remote Management and Service Integration. As one of the pivotal constituents of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), a series of various Government Departments applications are being hosted at SDC. Since SDC is the one and only repository of data and applications pertaining to the State e-Governance applications, the goal of SDC is to secure the Line Departments data and applications, which is one of the major challenges in these days, and to improve the quality of delivery of services to Business, Government and citizen in particular which can only be delivered through appropriate management of internal operations and back office.

The WBSDC is built upon a floor area of about 12000 +sq ft. The SWAN and WBSDC are based on the latest state-of-art technology with a vigorous architecture having multilevel redundancies, security and scalability with an additional emphasis in three-tier power supply system. The WBSDC complied with a world class Tier III+ data centre (having redundant capacity components and distribution path serving business continuity) as per TIA 942 standards with a guaranteed service level of 99.749% has a safe, secure, monitored, highly available power and cooling arrangements that is capable of accommodating several racks for network components and servers under centralized and simplified management. WBSDC is on the process of achieving ISO 27001/20000 Standard.

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The WBSDC is powered through a separate substation with two different sources of grid power supplies supported with multiple generator sets. A sturdy building management system with fire fighting arrangements, water leak detection system, biometrics for access control, alarms & surveillance, rodent repellent, public address system etc ensures safe and secured operation of WBSDC complying with ISMS standards. The WBSDC is fabricated with a full-bodied network infrastructure complied with both present generation Internet Protocol (IP v4) as well next generation Internet Protocol (IP v6) using Dual-Stack deployment and equipped with multilevel security system including intrusion prevention, demilitarization and two-level firewalling. WBSDC has robust Intranet Backbone coupled with 2 different Upstream Internet Service Providers.

Besides, the Data Centre possesses several servers to cater to shared services over multiple OS platforms with virtualization, viz. Windows, Linux and database management systems such as Oracle, MSSQL etc. The shared services also include power, storage space, local area network, tape library and abundant rack space to accommodate additional servers in the server farm. Facility Management Services (FMS) including routine backup, continuous monitoring of security, servers, network devices, application and database services, immediate resolution of defects and incidents are part and parcel of the 24 x 7 operational infrastructures.

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The FMS also includes furnished accommodation for the support personnel to be deployed by the Line Departments for regular support of their infrastructure. Measures are also being taken to create Disaster Recovery Service Centre (DRS) in a different seismic zone and integrate the WBSDC with it in order to maintain absolute business continuity with prevention of any data loss.

Line Departments interested in hosting applications in WBSDC may choose any one of the following hosting models depending on the complexity, criticality and volume of their application: Dedicated, Partially shared, and fully shared hosting models. They need to sign a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with Department of Information Technology & Electronics.

Keeping the above in view, it is compulsory for the SDC to adapt to standard practices since its inception which are in vogue in the global scenario. Accordingly, SDC has achieved ISO/IEC 20000:2011 that applies to IT Service Management System for maintaining desired quality of services and ISO/IEC 27001:2005 that applies to security of infrastructure, data and applications of the state. In order to meet the objectives of NeGP keeping the efficient and effective service delivery in mind, SDC is required to collaborate with several stakeholders, particularly the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), the Data Centre Operator, various system integrators of the participating Line Departments and etc. In view of this, it is very pertinent and imperative that the stakeholders do follow certain standards, policies and procedures besides executing certain basic roles and responsibilities in order to avoid confusion in and among the stakeholders.

At present WBSDC is hosting 157 Important Government applications, which includes 50+ mission critical applications (e.g. eOffice, IFMS, eDistrict, eBhuchitra, eNathikaran, WBPDS Portal, Digital Ration Card System, Aadhaar seeding, Commercial Tax, Excise Portals, Egiye Bangla, CMO Portals, CMO Grievance, CMO Relief Fund, Jai Bangla, P&RD, Caste Certificate (BCWD), Directorate of Securities, Home & Hill Affairs, Public Service Commission, WB Tourism, School Management Systems, e-Pension, EODB, BMSSY, CCTNS, Duare Sarkar, Student Credit Card, Paschim Banga ReshamSilpiSamabai, State Archives, Parliamentary Affairs, New Town Green City, HIDCO SAP application, NKDA Block Chain, Polution Control Board, WB Transport, IOSMS (School Education, UDMA, GTA), Nirmal Vidyalaya (Unicef), BanglarSiksha, Directorate of Securities, Directorate of Economic Offence, WBERC, Polution Control Board, WBPHIDCL, eParimap, UDMA Common Application Form, Karma SathiProkalpa, Fire & Emergency Service, WB HIRA, WB Finance Corporation, SNLTR, eAnumati, Police Commissioner Portals (Siliguri, Malda, Chandannagar), I&W Directorate Portal, Paschim Banga Sarad Samman, Child Rights & Tracking, Lakshmir Bhandar, etc. These applications are hosted at WBSDC using 500+ Virtual Machines (Servers) under Cloud Platform alongside co-located hosting and Common hosting infrastructure (shared infrastructure).

Following are some of the key features of WBSDC
  • Cold Aisle Containment
  • Monitoring at Rack Level Temperature and Humidity
  • Active Tiles for High Density Racks
  • PAC connected through ATS (Automatic Transfer Switch)
  • UPS Power for RACKs connected with different source and different path (dual path)
  • DC Infrastructure Management for optimization in cooling, power and IT infra utilization
  • Non-IT passive components monitored from IBMS
  • Implementation of Access Control & Visitor Management Software
  • Migration to Blade Server from traditional Rack Server
  • Latest Private Cloud Solution with RHOSP 13 and RHV 4.2
  • Blade Fabric Interconnectivity with 40 Gbps speed
  • Multi- Tenancy at host level
  • Network Leaf Spine Architecture with High End Nexus switches with 10 Gbps speed
  • IPv6 enabled Data Centre
  • Enhancement Internet bandwidth of 10 GBPS
  • Maintaining 3:1 ratio for upload vs download speed
  • Using vPC (Virtual Port Channel) for active-active back bone
  • Compute Capacity of 1000 VM
  • Separate IPS facility and malware protection for MZ and DMZ
  • Separate Virtual Load Balancer for critical application
  • Deployment of SSL certificate through WAF for all hosted applications
  • Deployment of LLB with active-active WAN links
  • Trend Micro - DDAN (Deep Discovery Analyzer) Sandboxing and Data Analysis
  • 4-layer Architecture for securing Web, App & Database servers
  • Single Management Console for managing the Trend Micro products
  • Coverage of all hosted applications (except collocated applications) under 4-layer architecture
  • Cluster mode unified storage ( Protocol :FC,ISCSI,NFS,CIFS)
  • All Flash Storage (Solid State Drives) + Traditional Hybrid Storage
  • Dedicated Backup VLAN for taking backup
  • Facility of Client Direct Backup
  • EMS for constant monitoring of all IT devices through software and auto notification to SI for incidents
  • Auto call in Service Desk for any incidents
  • Auto Email and SMS notification to concerned SI from Service Desk
  • Application & DB monitoring and Health Check through UIM
  • Reporting for all events from Jasper
  • Traffic Flow report of Router and Firewall through Network Flow Analysis(NFA)
  • Storage Capacity of 750TB
  • Auto notification through SMS
  • Service Monitoring through EMS tool
  • Disk threshold alert
  • 24x7 dedicated help desk for all (response time improved from few hours to few minutes)
  • Centralized log monitoring through SIEM tool
  • Close coordination with OEMs and authorized agencies for prompt resolution of technical issues
  • 4 layer security for critical applications
  • Backup facility of all VMs

The WBSDC is the key-supporting element of e-Government Initiatives & businesses for delivering services to the citizens with greater reliability, availability and serviceability of the Government Departments. SDC facilitates consolidation of services, applications and infrastructure. SDC provides many functionalities and some of the key functionalities are:

  • Domain Registration (Only *.wb.gov.in )
  • Secure Data Storage
  • Remote Management
  • Online Delivery of Services

West Bengal State Wide Area Network (WBSWAN)

WBSWAN : The State's Information Highway

West Bengal State Wide Area Network (WBSWAN) is the triple play backbone network for data, voice and video communication throughout the state of West Bengal .Over this Government Intranet, e-Governance activities of the Government of West Bengal are being carried out. WBSWAN provides connectivity of Data, Voice & Video Communication facilities from State Head Quarters at Kolkata up to all District, Sub Division and Block Headquarters.

Salient features of WBSWAN

  • Apart from the 433 vertical administrative units, around 1500 horizontal Government offices have been connected to this Networking backbone for accessing e-Gov services e.g video conferences, accessing internet services, e-mails , e Office and other e- Gov applications hosted at the State Data Centre. DHQs are connected to the State Head Quarters at Moni Bhandar via MPLS and NICNET over dual fiber optic links, which safe guards smooth operation in case of failure of one SHQ due to some major problem/natural disaster etc.
  • Government's e-mail facilities (@wb.gov.in) have been extended to various Government officials / MLAs over WBSWAN intranet or Internet.
  • 10 Gbps Connectivity with National Knowledge Network ( NKN ) has been extended up to the WBSWAN State Head Quarters and then proliferated to various Government Departments for accessing Internet and various e-Governance applications. Apart from that two additional ISPs were introduced to increase the redundancy.
  • State Capital as well as each District Headquarter has studio based Video Conferencing facility through Multipoint Conferencing Unit (MCU) at Kolkata. Also the important Government buildings in Kolkata are being provided with video conferencing facilities so that Government officials can directly talk to State /district level officials.
  • Software based desktop video conferencing has been implemented in all districts, sub divisions and block offices.
  • Provision for horizontal expansion for other departments' connectivity at all levels.

Using the Networking backbone the WBSWAN team has also implemented Campus LANs and wi-fi networks in various districts with data, voice and video facilities.

Among other projects, few are listed below:

  • In the New Normal scenario as Video conferences have become the most important mode of communication, WBSWAN provided extensive services for the Hon’ble CM, CS and other bureaucrats of GoWB to hold regular VCs. Various award giving ceremonies and District Administrative Review meetings are being held regularly through WBSWAN.
  • 67 Police offices (SP Offices, DIG and Police Districts) across West Bengal and 168 police offices under Kolkata Police jurisdiction are connected to WBSWAN and they are availing the VC and internet facility over WBSWAN.
  • Hospitals and Medical Colleges have been integrated with WBSWAN through Swasthya Bhavan for holding regular Video conferences during this pandemic situation.
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  • WBSWAN VC system has been allowed over internet. GPs can now avail the WBSWAN VC service by using Internet, Gram Panchayats in Jhargram , Bankura and Murshidabad are using this facility.
  • VoIP is integrated upto BHQ level, District Magistrates, SDOs and BDOs can easily communicate among them securely with this service. Officials at East Burdwan and Hooghly Campus LAN are also a part of this service.
  • CCTV surveillance has been set up at all SDO and BDO offices across the state.
  • CCTV surveillance systems have been implemented in RTO /ARTO offices for Transport department for recording of Driving License tests and CF tests for commercial vehicles.
  • Indoor Wi fi Network has been implanted in Public Service Commission Office and Birbhum District Collectorate for accessing internet and WBSWAN services.
  • Outdoor Wi –fi has been implemented in Diamond Harbour SDO office Campus for free public access.
  • WBSWAN network with failover circuit and VoIP facilities have been implemented in the WBTDCL Head Quarters, Salt Lake.
  • WAN/LAN Architecture provided by WBSWAN.

Other WBSWAN services & applications

  • To aggregate the e-Governance efforts of different Government departments in the remote offices spread across the State, Departmental WANs have been built around the backbone by connecting to the nearest node of WBSWAN.
  • Starting with the district level Treasuries connected over WBSWAN, now 85 sub divisional and district treasuries are connected to their head quarters at Kolkata using WBSWAN network
  • District level offices of Commercial Tax Department were first connected to WBSWAN for data transaction. Later, check posts, charge offices and circle offices were added to the network.
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  • 255 IGR and 424 LR offices are already connected with WBSWAN network; they can easily access Internet as well as e-Nathikaran and e-Bhuchitra application hosted at WBSDC. Apart from this, at selected 160 LR offices connectivity through SDWAN technology provided by WBSWAN.
  • 4 PVDs and 44 RTO/ARTO offices under Transport department are connected with WBSWAN, Failover implemented using NICNET link for better redundancy.
  • Presently 74 Polytechnic colleges are part of WBSWAN network.
  • All Secretariat and Directorates are connected with WBSWAN; they can easily access WBSDC hosted application and public Internet.
  • About 100 Regional labour offices had been connected to the nearest WBSWAN POP so that transaction data entries can take place.

West Bengal e-District Integrated Service Delivery Platform

Brief Overview of e-District

West Bengal e-District is a Mission Mode Project with the objective of making the State's services available to the citizens through a computerized system. The services may be availed of through Internet or by visiting any Bangla Sahayata Kendra (BSK) or a Kiosk. It may not be necessary to visit the Government Offices for submitting the application, knowing the status or receiving certificate / license etc.

Webel Technology Limited (WTL) under the administrative control of Department of Personnel & Administrative Reforms, Government of West Bengal is involved in successfully implementation of WB e-District project as well as execution of the work related to all other e- Governance activities as Nodal Agency and authorized as State Implementing Agency (SIA) for Government of West Bengal.

Government of West Bengal has been awarded SKOCH ORDER –OF-MERIT (Gold Medal) for year 2017 and Technology Sabha Awards 2018 of Express Computer for Enterprise Apps Category for West Bengal e-District MMP project

The objective of the project is to provide govt. services online for the citizen (G2C).

  • A single-window G2C e-Governance portal where 160+ services across 23 districts and most of the departments have already gone online.
  • Portal hosted from State Data Centre having requisite infrastructure to ensure
    • Uninterrupted availability
    • Data security
    • Accessible through Internet / SWAN (State Wide Area Network)
    • Single point maintainability
  • Robust environment
    • Unix based Operating System (RHEL)
    • WebSphere as Application server
    • IBM DB2 as RDBMS
    • Load balancer
    • Stand-by servers
  • High Scalability to handle
    • Any number of services
    • High volume transactions
  • High adaptability
    • Integration with services, irrespective of technology
    • Across-the-counter services
    • End-to-end process flow based services
  • Available through Internet / Common service Centre / Kiosks
  • Salient features
    • Uniform look-and-feel
    • Instant status update to citizen through SMS / email
    • Instant status update to citizen through SMS / email
    • Application tracking through Internet / CSC / Kiosk
    • Periodic SMS / email alerts for approvers
    • Online payment to Govt. through GRIPS
    • Digital signature on approval
    • Bilingual applications (English, Bengali)
    • Dashboard for all
    • MIS for Govt. officials
    • Integration with e-Taal

Infrastructure:

  • Procurement and Commissioning of necessary Data Centre Infrastructure for hosting e-District platform considering scalability requirement of next 5 years.
  • Identification of requirement of infrastructure for end user locations across all districts.
  • Procurement and Commissioning of identified infrastructure for 491 end user locations.
  • Last mile connectivity at end user locations
  • Readiness Certificates for
    • the end user locations (PoPs) from respective District Magistrates
    • SDC from appointed third party auditor.

Application:

  • Identification of G2C services after discussing with all districts and departments
  • Requirement study ( As-Is) with concerned authority
  • Approval of System Requirement Specifications (SRS)
  • e-District Application Software Design and Development
  • User Acceptance Testing Sign off
  • STQC/Third party auditor Certification
  • Issuance of Govt. Order
  • Go live
  • Application Training & Capacity Building
  • Operation & Maintenance
  • Provision of Integration with services available in other departmental application irrespective of technology
  • Eligible to adopt complex workflow of services like RTI, Occupancy Certificate of NKDA etc. as it comprising in-built Robust and configurable workflow
  • Application can be Sent Back in case of any anomaly in document
  • Fees will be received once the application is otherwise approved
  • Provision for saving draft copy
  • Reusability of previously submitted documents by the same applicant while availing a new application.
  • Overcoming network bandwidth challenge by introducing the feature of uploading split documents
  • Dashboard on Service wise District wise transaction status for all, Govt. officers as well as applicant, to achieve transparency.
  • Appreciating the Top Performing Districts of the Month (with respect to Application submission and processing) by highlighting them in the Login page of the portal
  • URL for Applicant: https://edistrict.wb.gov.in
  • URL for Govt. Officers: https://edistrict.wb.gov.in/workFlow
  • Bilingual, Reusable and Configurable Workflow
  • PKI for digital signature
  • Automatic report generation through MIS along with dashboard view
  • Third party integration for SMS Gateway, single window Integration, Payment Gateway
  • Linked applications to the Mobile e-governance Service Delivery Gateway (MSDG)
  • Integrated e-governance system with Government Receipt Portal System (GRIPS) and Electronic Transaction Aggregation and Analysis Layer (e-Taal)
  • Accessible through Internet and WB SWAN
  • Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of delivery of public services electronically to citizens at their door steps
  • Exchange of information with citizens
  • Improving internal efficiency
  • Reducing costs or increasing revenue
  • Re-structuring of administrative processes
  • Utilizing the pillars of State Data Centres (SDCs), State Wide Area Network (SWANs) and Bangla Sahayata Kendra (BSKs) optimally to deliver the public services
  • formation of District e-Governance Society (DeGS) with a District Implementation Committee in the all the Districts
  • Deployment of District Project Managers and District Technical Managers for smooth operation.
  • Data recovery from DR site of SDC if needed due the Act of God or Terrorism.
  • Instead of mere translation of existing process, business process re-engineering done after discussing with concerned authority.
  • Geographical - It covers whole of the state comprising 23 districts and most of the departments.
  • Functional - 160+ services in production and 40 will be in production in next 1 year.
  • Current Status - More than 1.54 Crore of application submitted.

Pre-deployment:

  • Largely manual system
  • Inefficient underlying processes
  • Limited hours of operation at offices
  • Only offline filing of applications and documents
  • Only Physical interactions for all transactions - Point of delay in service delivery and had Ethical issues
  • Government issued documents had authentication risks – Lack of digital signatures
  • Government issued documents had authentication risks – Lack of digital signatures
  • Documents submitted in physical form- prone to mishandling and misplacement
  • Lack of application tracking tools
  • Governance report generation was time and effort consuming

Post-deployment:

  • Unified e-governance portal
  • Empowerment of citizens
  • Administration's service delivery boosted
  • Online filing of application and documents
  • Automatic processing of applications
  • Real-time tracking of application status
  • SMS , email and portal based alert system for tracking
  • Digitally signed government issued documents
  • Alerts to government officials about the number of cases pending for review
  • Hassle-free data retrieval.
  • Timely report generation and prompt response to public requirements by government officials.
  • Application received online.
  • Documents are scanned and attached along with applications
  • Status of each event notified vide SMS / e-Mail
  • Fees can be taken once application is principally approved
  • Fees can be taken online
  • Approval / Rejection of Application through System
  • Anytime downloading of Certificate / License, etc.
  • Fully equipped Kiosk/Helpdesk is also available to help the people less acquainted with computers and its accessories, in submitting the application or getting hard copy of the certificate.
  • Highly Scalable platform of WB e-District ready to handle any no. of services as well as high volume transaction
  • Robust platform of this project ready to adopt G2B and G2G services

Business process re-engineering:

Excellence in Government Process Re-engineering to recognize the projects that involved analysis and re-design of workflow and which resulted in improvement in outcomes related to efficiency, effectiveness of process, cost, quality, service delivery or a combination of these.

  • from the archaic offline Forms in force to a structured Certificate
  • from the tedious application process to ease of access
  • improved efficiencies
  • Status of each event notified vide SMS / e-Mail
  • Digitally signed Certificate /Documents ensuring authenticity

Change Management

  • changes in government’s transaction process
  • change in service delivery mechanism
  • Increasing popularity of Online application resulting the decrease in count of Offline application drastically

Technology adaptations/ Innovative deployment

Innovative Use of Technology in e-Governance which resulted in delivering enhanced value to its beneficiaries (Citizens).

  • Rapid development on Java/J2EE Technology using customised e-District framework inherited from Spring
  • Robust and configurable workflow capable of handling complex process
  • Adherence to latest cyber security vulnerabilities in coding sequences, certified by Third Party Auditors

Industry best practices, standards compliant with

  • CMMI level 5
  • GIGW
  • W3C
  • OWASP’s vulnerability, as applicable
  • JCE Encryption for online payment

Outstanding performance in Citizen-Centric Service Delivery which resulted in delivering enhanced value (qualitative or quantitative or both) to its beneficiaries.

  • More than 1.54 crore application submitted.