Meghalaya State Data Centre (SDC)

Meghalaya State Data Centre

Background:

As a part of its ongoing effort to improve its efficiency and effectiveness through e-Governance, the Government of Meghalaya (GoM) has taken up the implementation of core infrastructure projects like CSC, SDC and SWAN on a high priority basis. The SDC (State Data Centre) is envisioned as the shared, reliable and secure services centre for hosting and managing the e-Governance Applications of the State and its constituent departments’ and enable the Government to deliver the services quickly and effectively to its stakeholders.

The SDC scheme was approved by Government of India with an outlay of Rs. 1623.20 crores over a period of 5 years. It was expected that the State Data Centres shall be set-up and operationalised by end 2009 across different States/UTs in the Country.

It was envisioned that the State Data Centre would provide functionalities such as acting as the Central Repository of the State, providing Secure Data Storage, Online Delivery of Services, Citizen Information/Services Portal, State Intranet Portal, Disaster Recovery, Remote Management and Service Integration etc. It was also thought that SDCs would also provide better operation & management control and minimize overall cost of Data Management, IT Resource Management and Deployment etc.

Architecture

• All the servers would be connected to Core Switch
• The Application servers would be accessing the database from the backend in order to process the user / citizens queries/requests.
• The Database servers (RDBMS) would be further hosted in higher security layer, comprising of components such as Firewall and Intrusion Prevention system.
• Application and System layer at SDC would be Multi-layered and designed to adhere to the open industry standards like XML, SOAP etc.
• The MSDC shall provide various Infrastructure Services such as Firewall Service, Directory Service, Web Service, Database Service, mailing and data storage services etc. which would be shared among all the applications / State departments participating in the MSDC. Using these services, the MSDC ensures centralized delivery of citizen / departmental services
• For Securing the SDC, the Intrusion prevention systems shall carryout state-full inspection and multiple layers of Firewalls shall manage the access control. At the same time more specific content level scanning products like Anti-Spam, network anti-virus gateways should be provisioned at appropriate points to ensure content level scanning, blocking and access.
• In this secure infrastructure it has to be ensured that the security devices in the network such as Firewalls, Anti-virus/Spam Filters, proxy servers, anti-virus gateways are in high-availability mode, and these components should be evenly distributed to optimize performance.
• The business related services would also have a potential of having multi-channel access / integration in future, as the data returned by the components would be in XML /SOAP format. Unicode would be the technology used for dissemination of information in multi-lingual format, though the existing data is stored in font based format. Since, several outside entities will access SDC services, and hence it is important to use international standards such as the Unicode etc.
• Implementing agency would provide monitoring access to Third Party Auditor / client/ designated officer for auditing purposes

Server and Application Set-up

MSDC would be hosting various e-governance applications, information portal, Citizen centric services applications and multiple databases. In order to meet requirements of the State Government Departments, Servers, Storage, Security infrastructure, application software and network infrastructure would be required for facilitate the applications such as:

Portal Server: The portal server at MSDC would be used for centrally hosting and managing websites of various departments, offices & PSU.

Web Servers: Most of the new G2C applications are having web interfaces, which require web servers for such services. The web servers would also be used for web hosting for different departments.

Application Server: Application would be required as middle tier for various web based applications. Application server would take care of the necessary workflow and web server would be required for the interfacing with the end user.

Database Server: The database/repository provides all the relevant information required to process any Citizen/Government request or to render any e-Governance services with the use of MSDC. Database server would be required to store and access data with ease.

Directory Server (Enterprise Access Server): Using Directory services SDC administrator should be able to define centralized authentication & authorization mechanisms for users. This would enable associate policies such as security, management etc on all servers/systems from a centralized console and enhances security, reduces IT complexity and increase overall efficiency.

Mail Server: Using SDC, centralized mailing facilities will be available for entire State department/ offices. This eventually would increase communication and enhanced productivity for the employee and officers of state government, within and outside departments and citizens of the Meghalaya State, as they will be able to communicate / share information with other email users.

Firewall: It is proposed to have perimeter as well as internal firewall which acts as different layer of security for MSDC IT infrastructure.

DNS Server: DNS server would be required for various website and web application hosted for public access. The internet users will query for the domains on the DNS (Public DNS) server deployed at the SDC in DMZ.

DHCP Servers: DHCP would be assisting the System administrators for dynamic IP allocation to devices/ users. Furthermore, the key users (require SDC services), who would be connecting using remote access, would be requiring a valid IP address after successful authentication. DHCP would be very beneficial to such users.

Management Server: The management server would help in administration of heterogeneous systems at MSDC. The management server would help in efficient and reliable administration of all the computing and networking devices and enable inventory management, patch management, monitoring the availability of services, fault management, performance management

Intrusion Prevention System: This will help in detecting any attempts of intrusion over a network further protecting the MSDC infrastructure,

Staging Server: A separate server will be kept as a Staging server where all the new services/ Application will be deployed for testing on this staging server before it is brought on to the production servers.

Helpdesk Management System: An ITIL based Helpdesk system would be used for assisting the service delivery by DCO for MSDC.

Server Load Balancer: The load balancer will be used for distributing work loads to a set of networked computer servers in such a manner that the computing resources are used in an optimal manner.

Backup Server: Backup server would be used for backing up the key data on regular interval. The backing up of the data would be an automated process. Whenever desired the backed up data can be restored/retrieved to the desired system configuration.

Progress Till Date

1. February 2008 - DPR (Detailed Project Report) approved by Meghalaya Information Technology Society and submitted for DIT’s consideration/approval
2. August 2008 - Consultancy Services Agreement was signed between MITS and M/s 3i-Infotech Ltd.
3. October 2008 – Pre Draft RFP submitted
4. November 2008 - Draft RFP Volume 1 & 2 submitted after incorporating all the changes suggested by MITS
5. January 2009 – Project Implementation Committee meeting held
6. February 2009 – RFP sent to DIT for approval
7. April 2009 – Pre bid meeting held
8. May 2009 – Corrigendum to RFP sent to DIT for approval