The West Bengal State Council for Science & Technology (WBSCST), Government of West Bengal has developed district level GIS databases to support the process of Local Level Planning at the levels of district, Block and Mouza. In the absence of a single window access mechanism to spatial data sources in the State (an indicative list of such agencies is at Annexure-I) like Geo-portal and a Data Clearinghouse, it has been difficult and time-consuming to discover/ access spatial data sets useful in the local level Planning process. Those geo-spatial data sets acquired, maintained, and provided by various concerned state-level Government/ Private/ Academic/ or Civil Society Organizations in West Bengal are proposed to be covered in the Project. The Geo-portal and the Data Clearinghouse will primarily be used for providing access to spatial data/ metadata sets currently held by WBSCST, different line Departments and different District Database Centres set up under NRDMS. The data/ metadata/ services will initially be accessed by the concerned staff based at the districts from the NRDMS Centres and the Line Departments. These services will be extended to beneficiaries of various developmental schemes/ programmes and the general public with certain restrictions under provisions of the prevailing rules and regulations of the Government. Other organisations/ agencies will share their data/ metadata sets held or provided by them by publishing their details in the Geoportal /Data Clearinghouse.

  Over the past one and a half decade all the twenty districts of West Bengal State have been covered under NRDMS. Each District Database contains spatial and attribute data sets useful in local level planning processes in the sectors of Natural Resources, Demography, Agro-economy, Socio-economy and Infrastructure facilities. Respective Zilla Parishads and Line Departments have been depending upon the databases for meeting their data requirements. With increasing dependence of the Zilla Parishads, Line Departments and other stake-holders of local level planning on spatial datasets, a need has been felt to speed up the process of discovery of and access to up-to-date spatial datasets.