IT Ministry Proposes to Store & Process Personal Info i.e nor 'Critical' nor 'Sensitive'

The IT Ministry is likely to propose that personal information which neither qualifies as 'critical' nor 'sensitive' should be allowed to be stored and processed anywhere, while data classified as 'critical' should be kept only in India under the draft Personal Data Protection Bill.

The proposal is significant as it marks a departure from the original draft of the Personal Data Protection Bill, which had recommended that copy of all personal data should be stored in the country. The tweaking of this provision, if accepted, will spell a relief for companies.

The draft Data Protection Bill submitted by Justice B N Srikrishna committee last year had also suggested that personal data that is of 'critical' nature should mandatorily be stored only in India, a stance that will be backed by the IT Ministry.

According to a government official, the IT Ministry is, however, of the view that not all personal data needs to be stored in India, and only critical and sensitive data should be kept here.

While 'critical' personal data should be mandatorily stored only in India, 'sensitive' personal information should be stored and processed in India but permitted to be transferred outside the country, the official pointed out.

The IT ministry feels that there are adequate safeguards in the proposed Bill and even if a copy of all personal data is not stored in India, such information will anyway be governed by the stringent provisions of the data protection law, including penalty in event of a breach.

After the Justice Srikrishna panel submitted its draft version of the Bill, the IT Ministry had sought public feedback on the provisions, and fine-tune the proposed document. The draft legislation will now be placed before the Cabinet, after which it will be introduced in Parliament.

The official said the change in the clause pertaining to all kinds of personal data was primarily driven by industry feedback - both Indian and global companies - which argued that maintaining one copy of all information may become cumbersome, expensive and increase compliance burden on firms.

"Most important change is that the original draft said that a copy of all personal data should be stored in India...ultimately, the Cabinet will take a call on the matter...IT Ministry is proposing that with regard to personal data only such data which is to be categorised as sensitive or critical needs to be stored in India," the official told PTI.

Justice Srikrishna panel - which submitted its report on data protection as well as the draft Personal Data Protection Bill in July 2018 - had recommended that "every data fiduciary shall ensure the storage, on a server or data centre located in India, of at least one serving copy of personal data to which this Act applies".

The original draft had also stated that central government should notify categories of personal data as 'critical' that shall only be processed in a server or data centre located in India. The committee left it to the government to define critical personal data.

The IT ministry is learnt to be of the view that Data Protection Authority of India - envisaged in the Bill - in consultation with the sector regulators and industry should recommend to the government what kind of personal information qualifies as critical data.

The original version defines 'Sensitive Personal Data' as personal information related to passwords, financial data, health data, sex life, sexual orientation, biometric data, genetic data, transgender status, and caste or tribe, religious or political affiliation; or other category of data specified by the authority. PTI MBI

India Rejects Google's 'Street View' Proposal

Indian government has refused Google's proposal to roll-out its "Street View" service in India, Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Gangaram Ahir said on Tuesday.

Google Street View is an application through which one can explore public areas, cities, tourist spots, hills and rivers using 360-degree panoramic and street-level imagery.

Union minister of state for home Hansraj said Google had submitted a proposal on the Google Street View for the government's permission in July 2015 but the government has not agreed to the proposal. Hansraj was replying to a written question asked by Balasubramaniam Senguttuvan, a member from Vellore in Tamil Nadu.

While Google's steet view service has been extensively used in the US, Canada and many European countries, its application in India was initially permitted for a few locations.

Notably, Google launched its Street View service in Bengaluru in 2011 to collect street-level imagery but was soon asked by local authorities to stop the service citing security reasons.

A Quint report states that while the government said no to Google’s proposal for Street View, possible for security and privacy reasons, there is one similar app in India called Wonobo.com. In 2013, Mumbai based Genesys has launched Wonobo, a 360 degree street view website, in partnership with India’s Tourism Ministry.

In 2008, a startup from Pune - Driveme.in did tried its hands to develop a similar street-view app, which used to let its users view the streets with driving like experiences and let them share, find and explore their favorite places online. However the startup had to shut down eventually.

In the same year, one more Indian startup Mapunity, a GIS/ MIS and mobile based technology company provided a ‘real time’ traffic details in form of maps but this too had to eventually change its model to something else but not street-view.

In 2015, Google joined hands with the Archaeological Survey of India to bring 31 historical monuments and sites online and offer panoramic views. It then launched street view for the Taj Mahal, Red Fort, Qutub Minar, Varanasi river bank, Nalanda University, Mysore Palace, Thanjavur temple and Chinnaswamy stadium.

Launched in 2007, Google Street View is currently present in more than 82 countries across the globe, which have benefited from it in terms of tourism and other aspects.

The above news was first reported in Economic Times.

India Rejects Google's 'Street View' Proposal

Indian government has refused Google's proposal to roll-out its "Street View" service in India, Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Gangaram Ahir said on Tuesday.

Google Street View is an application through which one can explore public areas, cities, tourist spots, hills and rivers using 360-degree panoramic and street-level imagery.

Union minister of state for home Hansraj said Google had submitted a proposal on the Google Street View for the government's permission in July 2015 but the government has not agreed to the proposal. Hansraj was replying to a written question asked by Balasubramaniam Senguttuvan, a member from Vellore in Tamil Nadu.

While Google's steet view service has been extensively used in the US, Canada and many European countries, its application in India was initially permitted for a few locations.

Notably, Google launched its Street View service in Bengaluru in 2011 to collect street-level imagery but was soon asked by local authorities to stop the service citing security reasons.

A Quint report states that while the government said no to Google’s proposal for Street View, possible for security and privacy reasons, there is one similar app in India called Wonobo.com. In 2013, Mumbai based Genesys has launched Wonobo, a 360 degree street view website, in partnership with India’s Tourism Ministry.

In 2008, a startup from Pune - Driveme.in did tried its hands to develop a similar street-view app, which used to let its users view the streets with driving like experiences and let them share, find and explore their favorite places online. However the startup had to shut down eventually.

In the same year, one more Indian startup Mapunity, a GIS/ MIS and mobile based technology company provided a ‘real time’ traffic details in form of maps but this too had to eventually change its model to something else but not street-view.

In 2015, Google joined hands with the Archaeological Survey of India to bring 31 historical monuments and sites online and offer panoramic views. It then launched street view for the Taj Mahal, Red Fort, Qutub Minar, Varanasi river bank, Nalanda University, Mysore Palace, Thanjavur temple and Chinnaswamy stadium.

Launched in 2007, Google Street View is currently present in more than 82 countries across the globe, which have benefited from it in terms of tourism and other aspects.

The above news was first reported in Economic Times.

Commerce And Industry Minister Launches Startup India Hub To Encourage Indian Entrepreneurs

Nirmala Sitharaman, the Commerce and Industry Minister yesterday launched the Startup India Virtual Hub to encourage Indian entrepreneur. It is an online platform for all stakeholders to discover, connect and engage with each other.

Commenting on the development, Sitharaman said, “Startup India Virtual Hub is an effort to create a marketplace where all the stakeholders can interact, exchange knowledge, and enable each other to grow. It will streamline the lifecycle of existing and potential startups, helping them access the right resources at the right time.”

The Virtual Hub is a dynamic and interactive platform that will facilitate learning and development, networking, mentorship, funding, etc. for startups. It will host startups, investors, funds, mentors, academia, incubators, accelerators, corporates, Government bodies and more. The basic principle behind developing this platform is to aggregate different offerings of the ecosystem and enable discovery by the right audience.

“The Hub attempts to solve the problem of information asymmetry and lack of access to knowledge, tools, and experts, especially in the nascent ecosystems across Tier II and III towns,” said the Commerce and Industry Minister.

The Hub will act as a nodal platform and will enable users to connect with ecosystem stakeholders, access free learning resources, tools and templates on legal, HR, accounting and regulatory issues and discussion forums. The Hub has also aggregated over 50 relevant Government schemes/programs.

In the next phase, the platform will also aggregate schemes available across various state governments. To provide a better user experience, the platform has been enabled to build smart intelligence along with Chat Bots to automatically collate, update information and respond to queries.

Startup India Hub has also partnered with various organizations to onboard entrepreneurs and investors, as well as build knowledge modules. To ensure accessibility across various platforms, dedicated apps are also available on both Android and iOS.

Not only this, during the launch, Minister also announced a new initiative, wherein a Startup exchange program amongst the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) nations would be organized which will enable startups from South Asian region to exchange new ideas and promoting interaction among them.

Speaking about the initiative, Minister said that she will be working towards having a SAARC country meet for startups and this event can act as a platform for exchanging ideas, which can be mutually beneficial and can be worked out. Further, she asked startups to share ideas about the people who can be invited for the meet.

In next couple of months, if ministry received the feedback then by December the meeting can be organised where Startups from SAARC country can come to India and share ideas.

Apart from this, the ministry is also planning to work in certain districts to identify schools and help them qualify to get tinkering labs under the Atal Innovation Mission.

“Ministry is working on modalities to facilitate the exchange of ideas between startups of India and Germany,” concludes the commerce and Industry Minister.

Missed Your Startup Updates? Here is Weekly News Roundup for You to Stay Tuned

This week was filled with new launches, renaming of startups, government announcements and how can we forget Google joining 1000 club. So in short, this week was a cheerful one for the startup world. And If you have missed any such happening, not to worry. We at IndianWeb2 brings for our reader a weekly dose of startup world.

Here are 10 news from startup ecosystem which you should not have missed:

A New Incubator for AgriTech Starups

Jindal Stainless Ltd. has formed the collaboration with the Japanese company Future Venture Capital Company Ltd. (FVCCL) to launch an incubation centre for agritech startups in India. The announcement was made at the ‘Krisi Unnati’ event organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Bhubaneswar.

The Agritech Incubator Will Select 5–10 Startups for the first batch.

Israel Calling Women-Led Indian Tech Startups

Embassy of Israel in India has officially launched the fifth edition of the Start TLV Competition in India, on Thursday. The competition is for women-led startups (or at least one co-founder should be a female). In order to provide maximum benefits to all its participants, the Embassy of Israel has joined hands with the Indian government's Startup India programme, TiE-NCR, YES Bank & YES Global Institute and CNBC-TV18. Last day to apply to the competition is July 7th, 2017.

Shocking! An Entrepreneur Receives Notice To Cancel His Firm’s Web Identity

A Delhi-based entrepreneur has received an email by the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) seeking the cancellation of his company’s domain by the name of “Startupindia.in”. NIXI demands the cancellation of the domain as it is “misleading and is in violation with the Startup India program.” This email was sent by NIXI on a request from Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) as it is creating a problem for the government who is currently using the “startupindia.gov.in” for its Startup India initiative.

Freshdesk Renames Itself To Freshworks

One of India’s most well-funded and Software as a Service (SaaS) startups, Freshdesk has rebranded itself as Freshworks Inc. It is a new umbrella brand that will bring together the company’s growing suite of business software. Following breakout growth of the company’s customer support software, and the introduction of new products for IT Service Management (ITSM), customer relationship management (CRM) and cloud-based call centers, Freshworks products are designed to help companies better engage and communicate with their customers and employees. Precisely six years after launching Freshdesk, Freshworks has became a SaaS powerhouse with five offices in Chennai, San Bruno, London, Sydney and Berlin.

Google Lovers Here Comes The News Of Google Joining $1,000 Share Club

Alphabet, Google’s parent company has joined $1,000, a share club. And this news comes just six days after e-commerce giant Amazon accomplished the same milestone. The California-based company’s Class-A shares crossed the $1,000 per share threshold and climb as much as 1.13 percent to $1,007.4. The tech giant’s shares have surged by a quarter since the start of 2017. Alphabet’s stock success can be attributed largely to its continued dominance in the search engine market with Google search, and the ad revenue that comes along with it.

Launch Of Accelerator Programme In Bengaluru By NetApp

Us-based storage and data management company, NetApp has launched the NetApp Excellerator programme in Bengaluru. It is the company’s first startup nurturing initiative in India which is designed to help startups create world class products and innovative solutions that are market ready.

The applications, for the four-month programme are invited from startups working in the areas related to IOT, cloud, big data and analytics, machine learning, virtualization, data security, storage and data management, and other adjacent areas. Selected startups will receive technology and business mentorship along with the access to markets and investors.

Airtel Business Rolls Out Digital Platform To Serve SMEs & Startups

Bharti Airtel’s B2B ARM, Airtel Business has launched a dedicated digital platform to serve the growing connectivity, communication and collaboration requirements of emerging businesses, including SMEs and Startups. The platform will offer solutions to emerging enterprises to enable ease of business and faster time to market.

Airtel’s new digital platform will offer connectivity solutions to start with and will be integrated with more solutions periodically. Emerging businesses can now discover and buy connectivity plans in just three easy steps which will eliminates multiple layers of traditional processes to offer a fast and convenient way to identify connectivity solutions.

Good News For Indian Subcontinent. India Leaves China Behind In Ease Of Doing Business

According to the 2017 Global Retail Development Index (GRDI), India has emerged at the top position among 30 developing countries in ease of doing business and what came as a surprise was, India leaving China behind.

Yes, the study, which ranks the top 30 developing countries in the world for retail investment worldwide and analyses 25 macroeconomic and retail-specific variables, explained that India’s stupendous performance on the index can be attributed to relaxation of FDI rules introduced by the central government and a consumption boom being witnessed in the South Asian country. The consumption boom is courtesy the country’s growing middle class and rapidly increasing consumer spending.

Now Entering German Market Becomes Ease For Indian Startups, Here’s How

After the news of India leaving China behind in ease of doing business, here comes the another good news for Indian startups. According to a startup exchange pact, which is likely to designed between Govt of India’s Startup India and German Startup Association, Indian startups may soon get easier access to the German market.

A formal agreement between the two countries is being worked upon and is likely to be signed soon. The agreement will be signed between Startup India and the German Startups Association, which has about 650 startups and 50 partners, including corporate entities and venture capital firms, and coordinates with the United States, China, India and Israel.

Acquisition Time. Product Discovery Platform Shoppist Gets Acquire By Roofpik

Real estate property and broker review platform, Roofpik has acquired product discovery platform, Shoppist. The acquisition will strengthen Roofpik core team and bring personalized property recommendations to its users.

The acquisition was driven by Roofpik’s interest in Shoppist’s use of NLP technology, which helps consumers discover the most relevant products based on their user persona. With this technology, Roofpik will be able to validate reviews and generate meaningful analytics from over 5,000 user reviews that are currently live on the platform.

Israel’s OurCrowd Enters Into Strategic Collaboration With India’s Reliance Private Client

Jerusalem-based equity crowdfunding platform, OurCrowd has entered into a strategic collaboration with India’s Reliance Private Client, in which the Indian wealth management firm will be offering its clients the option of investing in the Israeli company’s funds and startup portfolio.

The agreement between Israel’s OurCrowd and India’s Reliance Private Client will aim to build the former’s presence in the Indian subcontinent. Once this aim is substantially conquered, the equity crowdfunding firm hopes that it will be possible for its portfolio companies to export their products to the Indian market.

Israel To Support Women Entrepreneurs, Launches Start TLV Competition In India

The Embassy of Israel has launched the fifth edition of the Start TLV Competition in India. The competition is a platform to support women entrepreneurs in the country and helping them in accelerating the growth of their startups. In order to provide maximum benefits to all its participants, the Embassy of Israel has joined hands with the Indian government’s Startup India programme, TiE-NCR, YES Bank & YES Global Institute and CNBC-TV18. Last day to apply to the competition is July 7, 2017.

The ‘StartupIndia.in’ website which belongs to Startup India Advisory Services Pvt Ltd was incorporated in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs in July 2015. The company, which provides advisory services to tech based entrepreneurs has now even put up a disclaimer on the website stating that it has no relation whatsoever with the Indian government’s Startup India initiative.

Indian Government Adopts Open Source

Following the footsteps of nations like Germany and the UK, the Indian government on Monday announced its decision to embrace open source for its public offices. The policy on the same was published by the Ministry of Communication & Information Technology yesterday.

With acclaimed and prestigious Indian organizations like C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) and IIT Chennai already working on Debian based distro BOSS Linux, this move by centre seemed inevitable. In fact, being two steps ahead of the centre, the Tamil Nadu government has already been advocating open source for a while now.

According to experts, the financial benefit of using open source could be seen as the primary reason for government's passion behind the drive. Organizations all over the world have been adopting innovative alternative solutions in order to optimise costs. They have been doing this by exploring different avenues of “Open Source Software". In order to leverage economic and strategic benefits, the Government of India has been for long promoting the use of open source technologies in the e-Governance domain within the country.

"Adopt open standards and promote open source and open technologies", the charter reads.

The government's seriousness regarding the policy can be derived from the fact that the nature of compliance for the policy has been set to 'mandatory', which means all public facing offices will be mandatorily required to follow the same.

This step taken by the Indian government can prove to be a huge blow to Microsoft. Currently, Microsoft products dominate the Indian Govt. offices. It is expected, that with the open source policy initiated, the Indian Govt. will move away from the office suite as well as Microsoft’s operating systems including its latest offering Windows 10.

In the long run, the decision may also impact the 1.3 billion population of the country. Pirated softwares has a huge market in India. With free alternatives and open-source getting the government's nod., it would be interesting to observe which operating systems and software replaces regular proprietary software for the Indian population.

Indian Government Adopts Open Source

Following the footsteps of nations like Germany and the UK, the Indian government on Monday announced its decision to embrace open source for its public offices. The policy on the same was published by the Ministry of Communication & Information Technology yesterday.

With acclaimed and prestigious Indian organizations like C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) and IIT Chennai already working on Debian based distro BOSS Linux, this move by centre seemed inevitable. In fact, being two steps ahead of the centre, the Tamil Nadu government has already been advocating open source for a while now.

According to experts, the financial benefit of using open source could be seen as the primary reason for government's passion behind the drive. Organizations all over the world have been adopting innovative alternative solutions in order to optimise costs. They have been doing this by exploring different avenues of “Open Source Software". In order to leverage economic and strategic benefits, the Government of India has been for long promoting the use of open source technologies in the e-Governance domain within the country.

"Adopt open standards and promote open source and open technologies", the charter reads.

The government's seriousness regarding the policy can be derived from the fact that the nature of compliance for the policy has been set to 'mandatory', which means all public facing offices will be mandatorily required to follow the same.

This step taken by the Indian government can prove to be a huge blow to Microsoft. Currently, Microsoft products dominate the Indian Govt. offices. It is expected, that with the open source policy initiated, the Indian Govt. will move away from the office suite as well as Microsoft’s operating systems including its latest offering Windows 10.

In the long run, the decision may also impact the 1.3 billion population of the country. Pirated softwares has a huge market in India. With free alternatives and open-source getting the government's nod., it would be interesting to observe which operating systems and software replaces regular proprietary software for the Indian population.

Govt. Censored GitHub, Vimeo & 30 Other Websites in India

Multiple reports are coming in about an extremely unusual bout of Internet censoring in India. Sites like GitHub, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Pastebin etc have been blocked by various ISPs across India on the orders of Modi-led Government.

In this bizarre Internet censorship of Indian govt., DoT (Department of Telecom) has issued a notice to various Internet Service Providers in India to block a total of 32 miscellaneous websites in their network. The notice doesn’t state the reason for this move.

Insane! Govt orders blocking of 32 websites including @internetarchive @vimeo @github @pastebin #censorship #FoEx pic.twitter.com/F75ngSGohJ

— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) December 31, 2014

The above tweet was made public by Pranesh Pakesh, a director at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

In a recent update about blocking these 32 website in India, The head of the Bharatiya Janata political party has claimed that the sites were listed because they content from ISIS.

Gupta added that those sites which cooperate and remove the suspected ISIS content will be unblocked. Nonetheless, looking in from the outside, it certainly seems like the issue could have been handled in a clearer way that didn’t involved issuing blanket censorship blocks.

Most of the websites in blocking provided by govt. like GitHub, Archive.org are as harmless as PMO India's own website and people are still wandering about the reason for this kind of bizarre censorship. Notably, Github is a site that is used by every 2nd software engineer in the world and consider as back-bone of tech-startups of India.

Github, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Archive.org are used by millions across India and have nothing to do with such malpractices and the censorship of these sites is extremely surprising. While Github is ranked 101 in the word among millions of sites worldwide, Vimeo is ranked 119.

Ironically, Indian govt. in November'14 announced that it is planning to create Github like repository of software that can be created collaboratively and most recently appointed Slideshare co-founder Amit Ranjan to head this open source project. And now this move of government is opposing its own ideas.

Lets hope that Modi-led NDA Government realizes their blunder and works on revoking the censorship as soon as possible.

Govt. Planning To Create A Github-Like Repository To Collaboratively Develop Software

Indian government software applications are all set to save millions of dollars by moving away from proprietary system and shifting to open source. This will also result in the boosting of pace at which such programmes are being developed.

The Indian government is in the midst of developing a policy that will call for the usage of open source software as part of the government’s Digital India initiative. Government's future plans also include developing a Github like repository of software that can be created collaboratively.

"We don't want to make it a question of ideology but wherever possible, we want to make use of open source", said RS Sharma, secretary, department of electronics and Information Technology in a statement to Economic Times.  He further added, "We are also preparing something like SourceForge, where we will open up the source code of all the existing software and crowd source development like on Github".

SourceForge and Github are among the most famous repositories for software codes on the internet that can be revised and shared by many people.

This step by the government will help in boosting e-governance. It will also help in increasing savings as these applications and codes can be used again and again. According to Gartner, the Indian government will spend around $6.4 billion on IT products and services in the year 2014. The advantage of this step taken by the government is that every consulting firm will not have to re-invent the software again and again.  The policy under construction has an aim of speeding up the development process by deploying e-governance projects across various sectors of the government.

"Open source has offered us the best way out of vendor lock-in and unpredictable financial commitments" said Jay Pullur, founder and CEO, Pramati Technologies in a statement to Economic Times.

The repository will work towards avoiding the duplication of solutions and applications to a large extent. For example, if a state wants to adopt a particular application, all it has to do now is go to the repository and customize it.

According to Venkatesh Hariharan, director of Alchemy Business Solutions LLP, "The open code policy will ensure faster deployment of IT projects, speeding up the pace of innovation and reducing failure rate of projects".

 

Govt. Planning To Create A Github-Like Repository To Collaboratively Develop Software

Indian government software applications are all set to save millions of dollars by moving away from proprietary system and shifting to open source. This will also result in the boosting of pace at which such programmes are being developed.

The Indian government is in the midst of developing a policy that will call for the usage of open source software as part of the government’s Digital India initiative. Government's future plans also include developing a Github like repository of software that can be created collaboratively.

"We don't want to make it a question of ideology but wherever possible, we want to make use of open source", said RS Sharma, secretary, department of electronics and Information Technology in a statement to Economic Times.  He further added, "We are also preparing something like SourceForge, where we will open up the source code of all the existing software and crowd source development like on Github".

SourceForge and Github are among the most famous repositories for software codes on the internet that can be revised and shared by many people.

This step by the government will help in boosting e-governance. It will also help in increasing savings as these applications and codes can be used again and again. According to Gartner, the Indian government will spend around $6.4 billion on IT products and services in the year 2014. The advantage of this step taken by the government is that every consulting firm will not have to re-invent the software again and again.  The policy under construction has an aim of speeding up the development process by deploying e-governance projects across various sectors of the government.

"Open source has offered us the best way out of vendor lock-in and unpredictable financial commitments" said Jay Pullur, founder and CEO, Pramati Technologies in a statement to Economic Times.

The repository will work towards avoiding the duplication of solutions and applications to a large extent. For example, if a state wants to adopt a particular application, all it has to do now is go to the repository and customize it.

According to Venkatesh Hariharan, director of Alchemy Business Solutions LLP, "The open code policy will ensure faster deployment of IT projects, speeding up the pace of innovation and reducing failure rate of projects".

 

Indian Govt. to Launch Secure & Encrypted Email Service for Govt. officials.

All the Indian government officials will soon bid adieu to popular email services like Yahoo and Gmail. Some 5 million government officials will give up using popular email services for government's secure email by the end of this fiscal year. This step has been taken in order to safeguard sensitive and critical government data during official communication.

The proposal of establishing an encrypted and secure email service for the government officials was moved by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY). The government has recently approved this proposal.

"We are in the process of implementing this. At present about a million officials are covered by it and we need to scale it to cover a total of 5 million employees. This process will be completed by March 2015," said RS Sharma, Secretary, DeitY in a statement to PTI.

The project has been allocated a budget of 100 crores. This 100 crore budget includes expanding the required infrastructure and improving security of servers where the emails will be stored.

Sharma further added, “We need to scale the infrastructure of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to accommodate this large number of officials. Also there will be a state of the art security for the service to ensure nothing happens”.

If sources are to be believed, all the government communication except that of External Affairs and Ministry of Defence will be carried out using the NIC platform.

This step by the government has been taken in light of the recent increasing trends of hacking and cybercrimes. Recently, some 5 million Google usernames and passwords were leaked online by Russian hackers.

According to the sources, the email policy will make it mandatory for government officials to communicate officially only on NIC platform and not commercial, popular email services like hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail etc in order to protect critical and sensitive government data.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communication and IT Minister had also confirmed about the establishment of such a secure email service for government communication earlier this month.

Post the Snowden episode, governments all around the globe are trying their best to secure their official communication.

Indian Govt. to Launch Secure & Encrypted Email Service for Govt. officials.

All the Indian government officials will soon bid adieu to popular email services like Yahoo and Gmail. Some 5 million government officials will give up using popular email services for government's secure email by the end of this fiscal year. This step has been taken in order to safeguard sensitive and critical government data during official communication.

The proposal of establishing an encrypted and secure email service for the government officials was moved by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY). The government has recently approved this proposal.

"We are in the process of implementing this. At present about a million officials are covered by it and we need to scale it to cover a total of 5 million employees. This process will be completed by March 2015," said RS Sharma, Secretary, DeitY in a statement to PTI.

The project has been allocated a budget of 100 crores. This 100 crore budget includes expanding the required infrastructure and improving security of servers where the emails will be stored.

Sharma further added, “We need to scale the infrastructure of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to accommodate this large number of officials. Also there will be a state of the art security for the service to ensure nothing happens”.

If sources are to be believed, all the government communication except that of External Affairs and Ministry of Defence will be carried out using the NIC platform.

This step by the government has been taken in light of the recent increasing trends of hacking and cybercrimes. Recently, some 5 million Google usernames and passwords were leaked online by Russian hackers.

According to the sources, the email policy will make it mandatory for government officials to communicate officially only on NIC platform and not commercial, popular email services like hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail etc in order to protect critical and sensitive government data.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communication and IT Minister had also confirmed about the establishment of such a secure email service for government communication earlier this month.

Post the Snowden episode, governments all around the globe are trying their best to secure their official communication.