How was the IT Department renamed as Department of Information Technology and Digital Services?
The Tamil Nadu Department of Information Technology has been renamed the Department of Information Technology and Digital Services, Minister T. Mano Thangaraj informed the Assembly on Wednesday. He also said a new IT park would come up at Kanniyakumari at a cost of ₹50 crores.
Two ‘plug-and-play facilities for startups are also on the cards. One facility, measuring 30,000 square feet, would be established at the ELCOT-Special Economic Zone at Gangaikondan in Tirunelveli district at ₹6 crores. The second facility, measuring 27,461 square feet, would come up at ELCOSEZ, Hosur. The cost of setting up these two facilities would be borne by the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT).
Thangaraj said an Integrated IT Signature Complex, measuring over 2.6 lakh square feet, would be established at ₹150 crores at Kotturpuram in Chennai. Sources in the department said this complex would house a co-working space, startups, and IT firms, among others. “Around 100 new services would be provided by the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency through its e-sevai centers. This is in addition to the 192 and 72 services currently being provided through online and offline modes,” the Minister said. It has been proposed to arrive at estimates of expenditure incurred and allotment of investment in every department as part of measures to digitize all government departments.
The Minister said the Information Technology and Digital Services Department would contribute $100 billion towards Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Stalin’s vision of making the State a $1 trillion economy by 2030. He said the government would help entrepreneurs adopt future technologies, and new investments would be encouraged in this space.
“We have received proposals from educational institutions and software companies to create software tools for Tamil Virtual Academy. These proposals would be studied, and those that would be beneficial would be implemented by Tamil Virtual Academy at ₹2 crores,” he added.
A postgraduate course would be established at Tamil Virtual Academy at ₹29 lakh for graduates to pursue higher education in Tamil literature, grammar, culture, tradition, heritage, and the arts. The State government would also create a Digital Cultural Atlas and compile visible and formless artworks and document them on the internet through videos and sound and light shows and present them to the people. In the first phase, a Digital Cultural Atlas for the districts in Madurai Zone will be created at ₹1 crore by Tamil Virtual Academy.
The Minister also said the Tamil Nadu government would explore the possibility of establishing a SaaS Accelerator Center and a Startup Fund to help create 10,000 startups by 2030
T. Mano Thangaraj is an Indian Tamil politician and the current Minister of Information and Technology of Tamil Nadu. He was elected to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election in 2016 and 2021 from Padmanabhapuram.
Mano Thangaraj is from Karungal in Kanyakumari district. He was elected as the district panchayat chairman from 1996 to 2006. He was very much involved in politics right from his college days. He was the students' union chairman of Marthandam Christian College. In 1988, he protested against drawing water from the Pechiparai reservoir for the Koodankulam nuclear power plant.
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