The tedious work of tracing the files in various directorates or in the Secretariat will now be a thing of the past. With all activities and proceedings of the departments being entered on the network, people sitting anywhere in the world can track their particular file. “It would bring down the time and cost incurred for getting done minor works such as getting a copy of land record for which earlier four to five offices had to be visited. The cost of telephone bills in government departments is also likely to come down as all departments connected with this network can call up each other through this network which will cost less than even half of the existing rates,” said Sanjeev Gupta, Secretary, Information Technology.

After launching the HIMSWAN, Chief Minister P.K. Dhumal said, “The most crucial aspect of HIMSWAN is that the Secretariat’s dependency for all information on the directorates would come to an end. In the past, directorates have been so sluggish in giving information that by the time it reached the Secretariat, it was already obsolete.”

The next major initiative in the IT sector would be setting up an information technology park at Waknaghat, implementing IT education projects in schools and connecting the state’s premier Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital with a network that would maintain and track all medical records of the patients. To facilitate better services under the HIMSWAN, 50 integrated community service centres have been set up that are providing more than 40 services under one roof. As many as 3,361 more such centres are being set up.