National Informatics Centre has established a state-of-art National Data Centre at Vientiane (Lao PDR), under ‘Lao PDR - India Bilateral Cooperation on Information Communication Technology’. The National Data Centre was inaugurated jointly by Hon’ble Minister of State for External Affairs, Government of India Shri. E. Ahamed, and Dr. (Prof.) Bountiem Phissamay, Minister to Prime Minister and President Science Technology and Environment Agency, Government of Lao PDR on May 28, 2006 at Vientiane. Dr. N. Vijayaditya, DG NIC, Shri Tsewang Topden, Indian Ambassador to Lao PDR, Shri Ajeer Vaidya, Joint Secretary & Financial Adisor, DIT, Shri Biren Nanda, JS(South), MEA and a high level Indian Delegation was also present during the inauguration of the Data Centre. Shri. Ahamed, in his address during the inauguration ceremony, reaffirmed that Government of India remains committed to bridging the digital divide and contributing to the socio-economic development of Laos. He also stressed that India will always be a development partner to Lao PDR. Welcoming the initiatives of Government of India, Dr. Bountiem Phissamay said that “the Government of Lao is grateful to the government and people of India for their generous assistance”. He emphasized that the cooperation between India and Laos will enable Laos to achieve its long-term development goals and the National Data Centre will provide opportunities to enhance the Lao PDR’s role in ICT development, with a view to create and strengthen conditions for sustainable growth and development in the region. The Data Centre is the first of its kind in Laos and would act as the hub of all eGovernment activities that the Lao government seeks to develop. It will host all the eGovernance applications and integrate the National Portal with Portals of various Ministries/ Department/ Provinces of Lao to be developed subsequently. It will also provide a platform for delivery of citizen-centric solutions for the people of Lao PDR. Services at Data Centre: Messaging Services Database Applications Services Web Services Centralised Anitivirus and Spam Support DNS and Authentication Services Integrated Security Network Management Backup and Recovery support 24 X 7 Monitoring National e-Governance Action Plan The Ministers of the two countries also released the National e-Governance Action Plan for Government of Lao prepared by National Informatics Centre. The Action Plan is based on the Need Assessment Survey and Study conducted in about 80 Ministries/ Departments/Provinces of Government at Vientiane and outlines the framework for offering appropriate e-interfaces to the people of Lao PDR through electronic delivery channels. The plan once implemented will contribute effectively in ushering ‘SMART Governance’ in Lao. Launch of National Portal: The National Portal for Lao PDR (http://www.laopdr.gov.la) has been designed & developed on Open eNRICH framework by NIC. The Portal consists of National Portal, Dynamic websites of Ministries/Departments, portals of all provinces and districts, and was launched during the inaugural function. It is the first dynamic application, made available on National Data Centre, and provides a digital face of Government of Lao in cyber space. The Content Management for the National Portal will be done by the respective Ministries/ Departments of Lao Government for which an extensive training will be provided by NIC. NDC - Infrastructure A world class Infrastructure has been created to house the Data Centre at the Prime Minister’s office building at Science Technology and Environment Agency (STEA) office in Lao. The Data Centre has been designed in line of the TIA-942 standards to meet Tier II & Tier III specifications of the standard which would provide very high availability at all times. Accordingly, Interior, electromagnetic and IT Infrastructure was setup for Data Centre. It has multiple functional areas, which include high security Server Room, Console Room, Help Desk Area, Workstation Area, Telecom Room, etc. It has a Doubly Protected Power system, Access Control system based on IRIS control as well as Proximity Cards and Fire systems to take care of any emergency. The Computing environment includes high-end servers which are essential to provide various e-governance and other generic IT services, plasma screens for monitoring the operations, a Storage Area Network (SAN) of 1 TB capacity (scalable upto 8 TB), Backup Library and Backup Server, Security infrastructure consisting of Integrated Security Appliance which provides Firewall, Intrusion Detection, Intrusion Prevention, VPN and other such functionalities. For more information, please mail to amishra@nic.in