The Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSU) under the Ministry of Railways, RailTel Corporation of India Limited, has received an order from Madhya Pradesh State Electronics Development Corporation Limited (MPSEDC) for the expansion of the second phase of the State Data Center (SDC) and establishment of the Disaster Recovery (DR) centre.

According to Railway, the work order is valued at Rs 34.91 crore excluding GST, totalling Rs 41.19 crore including GST.

According to the contract, the order was awarded through an open bidding process.

The above-mentioned projects include upgrading, commissioning and managing the Madhya Pradesh National Data Centre and establishing a disaster recovery centre in the state for five years.

The State Data Centre (SDC) is conceived as a “shared, reliable and secure infrastructure service centre for hosting and managing e-government applications of the State and its constituent departments”.

Furthermore, it will provide many functions such as a Central Repository of the State, secure data storage, online service delivery, citizen information/service portal, national intranet portal, disaster recovery, remote management and service integration.

SDC will facilitate the safe, reliable and efficient delivery of Government-to-Government (G2G), Government-to-Consumer (G2C) and Government-to-Business (G2B) services, thereby increasing end-user satisfaction. Disaster recovery (DR) services are needed to prevent costly service interruptions caused by man-made or natural disasters.

More citizen-cantered beneficial programs involving e-government applications will be available to citizens with a click of a mouse and help improve services to citizens after the project is completed, the Ministry of Railways statement said.

This will increase the transparency, efficiency and effectiveness of different government initiatives, public expenditures and programmes.

Commenting on the development, chairman and managing director Sanjai Kumar said RailTel has been at the forefront of its customers’ digital transformation journeys. The award of this prestigious project from the Madhya Pradesh government reaffirms RailTel’s pivotal position in the domestic IT sector. The project is significant as the SDC forms one of the backbones of the core infrastructure required by the National e-Government Program (NeGP). We will continue to focus on more such projects to increase our revenue stream. We are committed to providing satisfactory service to our customers.

According to Railways, RailTel, a “Mini Ratna (Category-I)”, is one of the country’s largest neutral telecom infrastructure and ICT solutions and service providers, with a pan-India fibre optic network covering towns and rural areas across the country. In addition to a solid and reliable 61,000+ RKM fibre optic network, RailTel has two MeitY-studded Tier 3 data centres.

With its Pan India high-capacity network, RailTel strives to create a knowledge society in every aspect. Telecommunications has been selected to implement various mission-mode projects for the central government. RailTel offers multiple services such as MPLS VPN, Telepresence, Leased Lines, Tower Colocation, Data Centre Services and more. RailTel is also working with Indian Railways to transform railway stations into digital hubs by providing public Wi-Fi nationwide. More than 6,108 stations use RailTel’s RailWire Wi-Fi, according to a Ministry of Railways statement.