Chandigarh, Jan 16 (IANS): The Punjab government on Thursday announced to establishment of a security operations centre to ensure the protection of critical IT infrastructure, including applications and websites of the government.

This significant decision was taken in the 19th meeting of the Board of Governors of Punjab State e-Governance Society chaired by Minister of Governance Reforms Aman Arora here.

With the implementation of a security operations centre, to be established with an outlay of Rs 42.07 crore, Punjab will become one of the foremost states in northern India with high-level cyber security capabilities.

In the digital age, cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated and pervasive so the need to establish a security operations centre is increasing. It will enable monitoring, detecting and responding to cyber security incidents in real-time for the protection of the critical IT infrastructure.

After this meeting, the minister held a video conference meeting with all Deputy Commissioners to discuss and review the key governance reforms and strategies to further improve citizen service delivery.

He said Punjab has 538 Sewa Kendras and 438 Government to Citizens (G2C) services are being delivered seamlessly. The state has successfully brought down the pendency in citizen service delivery from 27 per cent to less than 0.17 per cent. He also lauded the Deputy Commissioners of Amritsar, Jalandhar and Pathankot for maintaining a low pendency level in citizen service delivery, while asking all the DCs to ensure regular monitoring and review of district-level pendency to identify and resolve bottlenecks.

Arora directed the DCs to identify and pull up the habitual delayers, who are sending applications back without solid reasons and putting unnecessary objections while emphasising the importance of providing clear objection remarks on pending applications to enhance transparency and accountability.

While taking stock of the project of the online verification of applications by sarpanches, nambardars and municipal Councillors, the directed the Deputy Commissioners to ensure that all of them are on board on the eSewa portal by this month to eliminate the need for residents to make multiple visits for document verification.