Panchayat offices in Idukki will soon have high-speed broadband connectivity, enabling citizens to access a wide range of e-services and e-applications and providing local bodies with a technology tool for development planning.
The district is set to be the first one in Kerala to link grama panchayats under the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project. All the eight block offices and 52 of the 53 grama panchayats in the district have been connected to NOFN.
Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad is scheduled to formally launch the project at a function here on Monday. NOFN uses Gigabit Passive Optical Network technology to enable a single optical fibre to serve multiple premises. It provides broadband connectivity to reach e-health, e-education, e-governance and e-commerce services and videoconferencing to grama panchayats and block offices.
NOFN uses the existing optical fibre from three public sector undertakings, namely BSNL, Railtel and PowerGrid, to provide broadband connectivity to over 2,50,000 panchayats across the country for e-services and e-applications.
The project is executed by the special purpose vehicle Bharat Broadband Network Limited, and is funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund.
NOFN enables maintenance of village records and citizen databases and performance monitoring of panchayats as well as intra-village and intra-district sharing of practices and resources and delivery of citizen services like health, education and finance. It offers a single point of government to citizen interaction for Centrally sponsored, central sector and state-sponsored schemes, a press note issued by the Kerala State IT mission said. The network is also designed to be a tool for developmental planning.
8 block offices, 52 grama panchayats to be networked
Idukki first district to be networked under NOFN project
