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Government Cloud

DIT To Unveil G-Cloud Policy By 2012

By Priyadarshini Paul | 28 March 2011

The Department of Information Technology (DIT) is set to roll out India’s first government cloud policy by 2012, which will modernise and streamline government services and bureaucratic functioning. In a country where implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) for public services has its own challenges – like limited to non-availability of IT infrastructure in most regions, and dearth of technical experts within the government, adoption of cloud computing is both a feasible and futuristic approach.

Speaking on the imminent policy and creation of a central cloud platform, Dharmarajan Krishnan, Principal Consultant of DIT, opined “This is a realistic approach where each user department plugs into a central platform – one that readily delivers applications and utilities necessary to public service delivery. The platform would on the fly, provide core infrastructure and a spectrum of common utilities such as e-payments, bank interfaces, authentication of services and office workflow programmes”.

As both the policy and the medium take shape, on implementation, the government-wide platform will free officialdom from the tediousness of complex technology procurements. It will also facilitate government leadership, resources and energy to focus on those areas that are in immediate want of reformation.

Krishnan added, “Technical developments like cloud computing offer viable paradigms and toolsets wherein individual offices need no longer bother where their applications and data are stored so long as they are secure inside a private closed system controlled by Government”.

The key concern while initiating e-governance objectives across individual government departments is the provision of inter-operability for exchange of data. A shared platform will give each department in the country a virtual independent space to operate while ensuring that this information is accessible across departments when required. Besides, applications developed by individual departments on open standards can be made available over to other users, cutting costs of re-inventing the wheel. Also, it will foster innovation though its application programming interfaces that companies can utilise to develop innovative products for use in the e-governance domain.

Krishnan concluded, “For competition, we are visualizing three or four such interoperable platforms, each with shared ownership. The entities managing the platforms maybe termed National Information Utilities. This will yield twin benefits of government control and private agility in service delivery”.

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