ARUNACHAL PRADESH CIVIL SECRETARIAT BECOME FIRST IN THE COUNTRY TO ENABLE Wi-Fi

The Arunachal Pradesh Civil Secretariat became the first Secretariat in the country to be entirely under wireless coverage with the launch of Wi-Fi Local Area Network (LAN) on 19^th July’2017. With this, the ‘power center’ of the state government has become wireless and in the process achieved the distinction of becoming the first Secretariat in the country to be entirely under wireless coverage, enabling end-to-end wireless connectivity in all its four blocks.

Pema Khandu, Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh congratulated the officials of State Information Technology and National Informatics Center (NIC) for the milestone in record time of two weeks (besides the four months in planning and designing) and expressed confidence that the set-up would overhaul work culture in the civil secretariat.“With the civil secretariat going wireless I foresee seamless and smooth communications between ministries and departments and accelerated work delivery to the people,” Pema remarked. He said this was a positive step towards fulfilling the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a ‘Digital India’ and is a big contribution from Arunachal Pradesh by becoming the first to have a secretariat with this digitalized facility. Reiterating his commitment to provide Wi-Fi facilities to citizens too, Pema said that soon the state Capital Complex (Itanagar-Naharlagun) will have specific Wi-Fi zones where citizens will get free access. He advised the IT department to coordinate with departments like Power, Home, etc to select specific zones in and around the capital that can be turned to free Wi-Fi zones.

However, the Chief Minister cautioned against misuse of free access to Wi-Fi internet and asked the NIC to put in place a mechanism for secured connectivity and misuse of data on offer. He also suggested sensitizing all officers and officials of the secretariat on the latest facility and its advantages, besides informing visitors the process of accessing free Wi-Fi while in the secretariat premises and ensure about the paperless offices  for transparency and accountability.

Conceived in December 2016, the wireless LAN project comprises state-of-the-art 5th generation CISCO wireless access points with 1 Gbps bandwidth in each of the four blocks powered by 10 Gbps NIC backbone link. The secured network can offer connections to up to 6000 employees, while 500 visitors can access it at one go. While officials can get access through their official (NIC) email ids, visitors have to access through the SWAGAT mode that generates an OTP for login in. The 157 access points installed across the secretariat premises would allow round the clock Wi-Fi access to officials and eight hours per day to visitors.