Govt to introduce e-mail, web usage policy for employees

The government is to come out with an e-mail policy in two months to ensure that all its employees use only official email service provided by NCI for official communication - A move intended to have secrecy of the electronic communications.

Shri. J Satyanarayana,secretary Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) said "we are coming up with an e-mail policy, which regulates uses of e-mail by all the government employees who are accessing government infrastructure (the NIC facility). The draft has been made ready and we are going for inter ministerial consultation very soon".

He said the policy will address the security concerns related to communications and data.

The government is also working on an Internet usage policy, which regulates the use of Internet by government officials.

"... There is also an acceptable Internet usage policy... in the government environment, we need to ensure that the Internet is not misused, so to prevent misuse of Internet, we have come up with this complementary policy," he said.

The development comes close on the heels of concerns being raised by a section in the government, especially intelligence agencies, over use of email services, provided by foreign firms (mostly US-based), which have their servers located in overseas locations, making it difficult to track if sensitive government data is being snooped upon. The companies whose servers are hosted in the US are under the leagal obligation to submit the data to the US government when demanded.  It was reported that India was among the top countries snooped by the US.