West Bengal laying the rails for a high speed e-governance journey

In this year’s Digital India awards, West Bengal (WB) bagged the silver icon in the excellence in Digital Governance (State / UT) category. The state, over a period of years, has been working diligently in order to lay the policy framework to roll out various Information Technology led citizen centric programmes.

Multi-stakeholder-inclusive policy framework
WB has notified the West Bengal state broadband policy 2020 along with guidelines on : West Bengal Telecom Infrastructure Guidelines 2020, West Bengal drone technology promotion guidelines 2020, West bengal State public transactional data sharing guidelines 2020, West Bengal state electronic storage sharing and electronic data retention guidelines 2020, West Bengal blockchain technology promotion guidelines 2020, West Bengal AI/ML technology promotion guidelines 2020.

WB has also developed and launched an online single window clearance portal to provide time bound telecom clearance to all ISPs and TSPs.

In order to cement the digital backbone for the front end applications to work smooth, safe and seamlessly, an online portal was launched to host the applications in the state data centre. Apart from the state Govt, the MSMEs, startups also used the capacities at the SDC.

According to a state Govt official, “WB is the first state in the country to provide a single storage portal for MSMEs, startups to host their applications at practically no cost,”.

Technology to thwart the pandemic aftermath
Karmo Bhumi – A respite for migrants
WB was also swift to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by launching citizen services, which not only served the resident population but also the migrant population. WB launched the ‘Karmo Bhumi’ portal, which acted as a matchmaking platform for the migrants with specific skills matching them to the employers who require them. The portal has enrolled over 45000+ applicants and 300+ organisations (employers). The portal has effectively materialised 9000+ jobs in private, Govt and semi-Govt organisations. The portal was also awarded by the Computer Society of India (CSI), with the National CSI Award of Recognition.

Karmo Bhumi proving to be a jobs portal is just one aspect; it is also a rich platform for upskill, reskill, career counselling. It offers free assessments, career counselling and skill workshops to applicants. An internship and training module has been launched for college students.

Cyber security training
Cyber security awareness and training has emerged as a major requirement in the pandemic paradigm as cyber attacks mushroomed across the world wide web. WB, as a part of its overall digital strategy was sort of preparing itself from all fronts to secure the digital infrastructure of the state. The state has launched a cyber security CoE (CSCoE) wherein steps were taken on three fronts : training, audits and forensics.

On the training front : About 1200 police officials are being trained on major facets of cyber security.

The Govt employees (1700+) from 11 departments are also imparted training. Over 193 Govt officials have been trained in three batches, under the cyber swadhinota programme. Close to 440+ teachers have gone through the cyber shikshak programme.

The citizens, an important part of the chain, are also being reached out with digital campaigns to raise their cyber security awareness.

IT Audit
A wholesome audit of all Government departments is also calendarised. The following is audited : IT assets and systems, IT applications and portals, 80 departments have been audited for IT infrastructure security, 105 Govt portals have been audited and remediation effected.

A number of dedicated agencies have also been setup – State computer emergency response team (State CERT) has been established and operationalised; Cyber crisis management plan (CCMP) has been formulated and launched; A Security operations centre (SOC) is under construction.

Building forensics capabilities
A host of forensic tools have been procured along with the setting up of a state forensics lab. CID officials have been trained on cyber forensics; upskilling and upgrading of the CS – CoE for inhouse professionals and collaborating with the state police academy on conducting large scale training for cyber forensic investigation.

WB also immediately launched a 24X7 COVID-19 helpline. The first priority was to keep the flow of citizen services intact and to that effect, a 24X7 helpline number, email and portal was organised and established for all stakeholders to ensure smooth and seamless running of IT and ITeS required for delivery of essential services. Scenario based FAQs were created in the lockdown period. This service benefited over 100 organisations helping them to deliver their services without any service disruption.