The new Made in India e-mail service will be first rolled out for the use of the Central government after which it will be extended to state governments.
As per a report published in India today, The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. of India is working hard to create a strong e-mail service that will ensure government communications and data are effective and safe. The new email service will have smart features, and has been modelled on the lines of Gmail and Yahoo to make it user-friendly.
The new Made in India e-mail service will be first rolled out for the use of the Central government after which it will be extended to state governments. In the final phase it will also be made available to all Indian citizens for their interaction with the government.
The report also says that although the government has invested more than Rs.800 crore on modernising its existing National Informatics Centre (NIC) to ensure effective communication between departments and to have a system that cannot be hacked, the exercise has not been very successful.
The nic.in network being used now by the government lacks sufficient bandwidth as a result of which it does not support larger files and makes downloading very slow. This has forced officials to switch to private e-mail accounts such as Gmail or Yahoo even for official work, making the nation’s decisionmaking system vulnerable to hacking.
The new upcoming India-owned Gmail like platform is part of the ambitious Digital India programme of the NarendraModi government. The programme, which would be implemented in a phased manner by 2019, is estimated to cost about Rs.1.13 lakh crore and will largely include on-going schemes being run by DeitY and the Department of Telecommunications.
