E-mail policy for govt staff likely in two months

NEW DELHI: In order to safeguard critical data, government is likely to come out with an e-mail policy in two months to ensure that all its employees use only official service for communication.

"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," Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) Secretary J Satyanarayana said here.

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

Apart from this, 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.

Asked if the government is looking to ban the use of Gmail and Yahoo by government staff once the policy is put in place, Satyanarayana said these things will be sorted out but the officials will have to communicate through the nic.in platform.

The government will send a formal notification after the policy is implemented in about two months, covering about 5-6 lakh Central and State government employees to use the email service provided by National Informatics Centre (NIC).

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.