Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the IT major, will now take up the e-governance project of the Orissa government, which was earlier awarded to Hewlett Packard (HP) which exited from the project.

The e-governance project focuses on creation of a state service delivery gateway (SSDG) and maintenance of a state website, to offer public services.

The Orissa government's e-governance project is estimated to cost Rs 13 crore and is expected to be implemented in a span of three years.

Earlier, the e-governance project was awarded to HP, which emerged as the preferred bidder for the project. But due to its refusal to agree with the terms and conditions of the project and unsatisfactory progress, the Orissa government decided to terminate its contract with HP and later on the project was handed over to the second top bidder i.e. TCS.

The project contract will soon be awarded to TCS. The project aims to provide various types of public services such as education certificate and trade license through a single web portal.

TCS will develop a state service delivery gateway (SSDG) to carry out the application of services, and maintain the state portal and rollout e-forms for various services. TCS will use the data and information stored at the state data centre for the project.