JAMMU: The Jammu and Kashmir government has said that the implementation of the Rs 67.62 crore e-Office project in the Union Territory has been carried out by the Jammu and Kashmir e-Governance Agency (JaKeGA) under the Administrative Control of the Information Technology Department. The project, designed and developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), has now been migrated to Railtel Corporation of India Limited, a Central Public Sector Enterprise, with full funding from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, for an initial period of three years.
According to the details that the government tabled in the hose during question hour on Tuesday, the e-Office project was rolled out through JaKeGA, which was responsible for training, handholding, and onboarding users onto the platform. The total expenditure of Rs 67.62 crore covers various components, including the establishment of wired LANs at the Civil Secretariats in Jammu and Srinagar, a dedicated 2 Gbps internet lease line, MPLS network infrastructure, and a disaster recovery centre located outside Jammu and Kashmir’s seismic zone. The cost of setting up wired LANs at the Civil Secretariats in Jammu and Srinagar, along with five years of maintenance and support, was Rs 1.64 crore and Rs 13.57 crore respectively. A five-year dedicated 2 Gbps Internet Lease Line for both Secretariats amounted to Rs 10.50 crore, while the MPLS network setup for e-Office over the same period cost Rs 2.05 crore. A dedicated near Data Centre in the Srinagar Secretariat, which operates in parallel with the Jammu Data Centre and comes with five years of maintenance and support, cost Rs 4.80 crore. The Disaster Recovery Centre, which is located outside Jammu and Kashmir’s seismic zone for added security, along with its upkeep and maintenance, was set up at a cost of Rs 3.71 crore. Handholding and training for the rollout and operation of the e-Office platform over a period of two years was carried out at a cost of Rs 7.57 crore. The IT gap infrastructure, including five years of maintenance and support, amounted to Rs 13.29 crore.
In addition to these infrastructure costs, Rs 4.96 crore was spent on software licensing, training, capacity building, data recovery site maintenance, and manpower. Out of this amount, Rs 75.80 lakh was spent on software licensing through NICSI. Training and capacity building, carried out by Railtel, cost Rs 7.55 lakh. The Disaster Recovery Centre, for one year of operation, cost Rs 8.09 lakh, also paid to Railtel. Manpower expenses accounted for Rs 2.26 crore for the first two years, paid to Railtel, followed by Rs 1.67 crore paid to M/s TechUgo for manpower from August 2023 onwards.
The government has said that the implementation of the e-Office project in Jammu and Kashmir was carried out through JaKeGA under the Administrative Control of the Information Technology Department. The e-Office application was originally designed and developed by the National Informatics Centre, and the software and licences were purchased from National Informatics Centre Services Inc., a Section 8 company under the Companies Act, 2013. The shift of the e-Office platform to Railtel was done in accordance with the government’s decision to host e-Office applications for ten states and Union Territories, including eight northeastern states, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh, under a centrally funded initiative. The government has said that the migration of Jammu and Kashmir’s e-Office to Railtel was undertaken to ensure reliable cloud hosting, robust disaster recovery mechanisms, and cost efficiency. The Railtel cloud already hosts multiple government applications across India and provides a disaster recovery facility in a different seismic zone, which enhances data security. The shift to Railtel has been described as a move that unburdens the Jammu and Kashmir exchequer, as the operational and management costs are being borne by MeitY for the first three years. The Railtel cloud infrastructure offers a 99.9 per cent uptime, which, according to the government, is crucial for ensuring smooth government operations and user productivity.
The rollout of the e-Office platform in Jammu and Kashmir was carried out following an Administrative Council decision dated March 10, 2021. Administrative approval for the project was granted through Government Order No. 17-JK(ITD) dated March 15, 2021. The project included multiple components, such as setting up wired LANs at the Civil Secretariats in Jammu and Srinagar, provisioning a dedicated 2 Gbps Internet Lease Line, establishing an MPLS network for the e-Office, and setting up a dedicated near Data Centre in the Srinagar Secretariat alongside the Jammu Data Centre. It also involved the creation of a Disaster Recovery Centre outside Jammu and Kashmir’s seismic zone and the provision of handholding and training for e-Office rollout and operations. Out of these components, the work order for two key parts of the project, namely the handholding and training of officials for the rollout and operations of the e-Office platform and the establishment of the Disaster Recovery Centre, was awarded to Railtel Corporation of India Limited on a nomination basis, in accordance with the provisions of the General Financial Rules (GFR) 2017.
Under this agreement, Railtel provided 20 onsite resources for a period of two years, which ended in March 2023, at a cost of Rs 2.26 crore. Following the expiry of this period, JaKeGA hired 20 resources on an outsourced basis through the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) for the continued operation and maintenance of the e-Office platform. The migration of Jammu and Kashmir’s e-Office to NIC/NICSI cloud was approved under Government Order No. 55-JK(ITD) of 2024, dated September 26, 2024. The government has said that the migration was carried out with a commitment to ensuring zero data loss, full data integration, and a complete replication of the existing e-files. The e-Office platform, which is now hosted in a managed services model by NIC/NICSI, operates with 99 per cent uptime, as confirmed by NIC.
As part of the migration, three separate instances of Jammu and Kashmir’s e-Office have been hosted at the Data Centre to optimise performance, with dedicated user allocations for the Secretariat (5,000 users), District Collector offices (10,000 users), and Head of Department offices (10,000 users). NIC and NICSI have been tasked with providing the necessary deployment infrastructure and professional managed services for up to 25,000 users across the Government of Jammu and Kashmir. The setup includes infrastructure redundancy and backup copies stored on separate infrastructure to ensure continuity of services in case of disruption at the primary data centre. NIC and NICSI have also been made responsible for providing manpower resources for a period of three years, including seven professionals for capacity building and helpdesk operations in Jammu and Kashmir. The migration of the e-Office platform has been carried out in coordination with all stakeholders, including NIC, CDAC, and JaKeGA, to ensure a seamless transition.
The government has said that the project, being fully funded by the Government of India, has no financial implications for the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The transition to Railtel, according to the government, offers significant advantages, including enhanced data security, a reliable disaster recovery mechanism, and a cost-effective solution for hosting e-Office applications.
