IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

According to him, one of the biggest challenges that the country has been facing is the lack of quality education. “The emphasis should be on the application of knowledge rather than on the acquisition of knowledge and the Cloud provides a platform for the same,” he said.

T Balakrishnan, additional chief secretary to the government on IT and Industries told, ToI here on Friday that cloud computing would be helpful in e-governance initiatives and effective delivery of services. "It's a technology that helps increase profits as it improves resource utilization. And the good news is that Kerala is fast emerging as a leader in this field."

“For good governance of any nation, it is necessary that all decision makers are sensitive and transparent to the needs of the common man. This can be achieved by the use of cloud computing in e-governance for the meaningful and sustainable inclusive growth”, said Shankar Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, at a CII Conference on Cloud Computing “Concurrent Technologies 2011 – Reaping Through the Clouds”.

He added “One of the biggest challenges facing the country today is lack of quality education and the emphasis should be on the application of knowledge rather than on the acquisition of knowledge, and the cloud provides platform for the same - with the broadband reaching to all block-level village by June 2012”.

Q: With the exponential rise in government and citizen data, particularly a flood of unstructured data and imaging data, how sustainable you think are the traditional hosted and on-premise IT delivery models? Are cloud-hosted models the way to go?

The recession of 2008 has taught many lessons, and one of them is moving towards ‘asset light models, keeping our heads low, and overheads lower’ and focusing on the core and outsourcing the non-core. The traditional hosted and on premise IT delivery models are no longer sustainable and cloud-based models and outsourcing models are the way to go, given that traditional on-premise delivery models come with significant overheads in terms of software and hardware maintenance contracts, investments in data centres, dedicated staff with relevant skill sets and integration efforts each time while on-boarding new systems. The cloud-based models eliminate all these overheads and help focus on the core on e-governance. Secure cloud based models are replicable, scalable and sustainable and will be the way forward.

The government of India has floated a draft RFP for provisional accreditation of cloud services of private cloud providers in the country.

The government is offering a new model of cloud computing services (including IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) to the users through ‘GI Cloud’ coined as MeghRaj. The focus of MeghRaj is to evolve a strategy and implement various components to ensure proliferation of cloud in government vertical through private cloud players.

VMware has announced that the Government of Maharashtra has selected VMware virtualization and cloud infrastructure technology for its MahaGov Cloud. MahaGov Cloud is an initiative by the Directorate of Information Technology (DIT), Government of Maharashtra to provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS),Platform as a service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) to various state departments for their e-governance initiatives.

Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) secretary Ram Sewak Sharma told ET that he has identified six existing mission mode projects (MMP) which will be assessed by an internal group, based on the need for technology upgradation, scope of process simplification with emerging technologies and the possibility of leveraging newer technology platforms.

Citizen services like pension claims, tax payments, and grievance redress are now all accessible at the click of a button. How efficient these projects are in the long run remains to be seen. But this, at least, is a start. And the next essential step now, according to the National Informatics Centre (NIC) officials in Gurgaon, is to ensure proper training for the government officials. NIC is organizing a computer literacy program for the government officials in the city, which will be held in various departments over the next few weeks. Officials say that the program is slated to begin after August 15, and will focus on various aspects of incorporating IT in governance and practical training.

Customised in unused shipping containers with high-end cloud-connectivity for video and audio links, the eHealth Centres can be rapidly deployed at any place. The centres will be manned by trained medical staffs equipped with necessary medical equipments.

With vast amounts of medical data generated each year, many small and medium-sized healthcare enterprises are opting for cloud technology to store, access and share data, to reduce operational costs and increase efficiency.

Unlike large super-speciality hospitals that have in-house technology for managing data, SMEs in the healthcare space – mainly 25-50-bed hospitals – are opting for cloud technology.

As in almost every area of daily life, governance too is going digital in a big way. With the emergence and increasing ubiquity of cloud computing, this is set to increase in reach and pace as governments across the globe harness the very latest in information and communication technology to deliver its services to citizens quickly, conveniently, remotely and economically.

At the national, regional and local level, all governments and government agencies provide multiple services to its citizens across numerous facets of their lives - from identity cards to driving licences, passports, pensions and subsidies irrespective of whether they dwell in rural, suburban or urban locales of the country. Information and communication technology has made the delivery of such services faster, secure, convenient, effective, scalable, transparent, simple, accessible and more economical, thus paving the way for electronic governance, or e-governance.

An e-governance system with cloud computing facility has been installed at the Commissionerate of Rural Development.

A press release that was issued here said that the Commisionerate is the first department in the State to have an e-office system based on cloud computing.

In a major stride by the Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM), the state would become the first to implement the Cloud data technology as per the guidelines laid down by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY).

The Cloud system will host and co-host e-governance applications of various departments thereby reducing data storage at the departmental level.

The Cloud infrastructure inaugurated at the State Data Centre on the Technopark campus here on Wednesday will provide the latest technology for management and operation of e-governance applications for various departments.

It will eliminate the need for departments to buy individual servers and enable sharing of information and hosting applications across different platforms.

Cloud computing is very useful in the scenarios when data loss is to be avoided. With the use of cloud computing we can use other system services and software. This information was given by Vidit Mathur as key speaker in a seminar organised by physics and computer department of Government Post-graduate College.

Keeping in tune with the changing times, Maharashtra Government has asked all its departments to shift their Applications to ‘Cloud’ computing by October 30, 2018. Department of Information Technology has asked all the departments to review their existing software applications and ensure that the applications are ‘cloud ready’ in time for the said migration.

With the emphasis on cloud computing, the Government is taking a leap ahead in e-governance. With technological advancements, cloud computing is becoming the preferred way for implementing all e-governance projects in the State. The latest move is in accordance with the recommendations in the Cloud Computing Policy prepared by a committee, which was headed by Principal Secretary of Information Technology Department. On January 17, 2018, the Government approved the said policy and now it has issued directions to all departments to take steps accordingly.

With the newly elected government led by Narendra Modi taking over, the IT fraternity in India, to begin with, expects significant development in creating a clear regulatory and policy framework around cloud computing.

Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has already acknowledged the role of IT as a game changer and has plans to leverage IT for faster business implementations across the country. Having said this, it might be the right opportunity to have a separate legislation dealing exclusively with the regulatory and privacy policies or other legal issues pertaining to cloud computing.

India’s National Informatics Center or NIC, the riverbed for all the IT adoption in India is all set to look towards the cloud way when it comes to delivering e-governance related IT applications at the village level. NIC is set to use Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) software is the cornerstone of the e-governance cloud project in India that is delivering the power of modern information technology to remote districts and villages throughout that country.

The unified and shared infrastructure is flexible enough to rapidly respond to Infrastructure requirements.

National Informatics Centre has set up a new state-of-the-art cloud-enabled National Data Centre at Bhubaneswar.

The data centre will be inaugurated on May 28 by Union Minister of Electronics & IT and Law & Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad in the presence of Union Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan.

As many as 250 government departments and entities are availing the national cloud services which are being run by National Informatics Centre.

As many as 250 government departments and entities are availing the national cloud services which are being run by National Informatics Centre (NIC), Parliament was informed today.

Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the government has already embarked upon the cloud computing initiative known by the name of GI Cloud (MeghRaj), which can be utilised for delivering good governance.