Government Will Soon Ask Its Employees To Stop Using Gmail For Official Purposes

The Indian Government is expected to soon make an announcement asking its employees to stop using Public Email services like Gmail to send and receive official communication.

Clearly intended to further bolster security of governmental and associated information, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology is soon expected to send out a formal communication, asking 5 Lakh Government Employees to immediately cease using email services offered by companies like Google (Gmail), Microsoft (Outlook) and any other company that operates it servers from foreign lands.

Employees will be asked to switch to the official email service provided by India’s National Informatics Centre. In case users do not have an official email id, they will be asked to make an application and seek allocation of the same. No information about exchanging Personal communication has come forth yet. However, political figures and employees alike won’t be asked to use official email ids for personal communication.

As an apparent aftermath from the revelation of US Government’s covert operation code-named PRISM, the Indian Government is being forced to take such a drastic decision. No information about India and its Government should ideally be stored on foreign servers clarified J Satyanarayana, Secretary in the Department Of Electronics And Information Technology, “Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside. Currently, we are looking to address this in the government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data,”

Several senior government officials in India, including Ministers of State for Communications & IT Milind Deora and Kruparani Killi, have Gmail IDs listed as their official Email ID even on government portals. While no Government Employees will accept openly, they resort to using Gmail IDs owing to the long and tedious bureaucratic processes that govern creation of new accounts.

The Indian Government had been pretty insistent towards such foreign companies to install and operate servers in India for their Indian Operation. Will the Government still allow the use of Gmail or other Email IDs if the service providers accept the demands?

Image Courtesy |  theatlantic

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