A special committee which was set up to review the developments in this regard held a meeting with Delhi Chief Secretary S Reghunathan and officials from National Informatics Centre, Planning, Finance and Information Technology discussed about the progress of the project on Thursday.

On May 30, the Central Government had also organised a conference of state IT secretaries in the Capital and briefed them on the advantages of this project and directed them to implement SWAN in their states. During the meeting, it was also noted that the establishment of SWAN is an expensive proposition involving high capital cost, recurring bandwidth and operational cost.

For efficient implementation, the states have been told to identify a suitable PPP model and select an agency through a suitable competitive process for outsourcing establishment, operation and maintenance of the entire network. Once this process is over, they have been instructed to designate NIC as the prime implementation agency for future tasks.

Besides, the states have been told that the NIC would issue security guidelines to all the SWANs and ask them to strictly adhere to them.