Centre bans official use of private email

online activities of babus under watch

New Delhi: The Union government has decided to ban the use of Gmail or any other private email for official communication across all its organizations, and make it mandatory for them to migrate to email services provided by the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

The Modi government issued two email notifications earlier this month to all its officials, stating the ban of Gmail, Yahoo and other third-party email services. The notification asserted that the government can monitor their online activities and delete history and past emails, upon intimation to the user. “NIC may block content which, in the opinion of the organisation concerned, is inappropriate, or may adversely affect the productivity of the users,” says the notification.

The NIC will maintain email logs for all user IDs for two years. Any security incident, or an adverse event that can impact availability, integrity, confidentiality of government data, must immediately be reported to the computer emergency response team (CERT-IN).

This step comes in the wake of many document leaks within crucial ministries like oil and petroleum. Earlier this year, the Maharashtra government started to develop its own messaging app for security reasons. Also, in 2012, Yahoo and Gmail were asked to route all emails accessed in India through the country even if the mail account is registered outside the country. By the end of the current fiscal, five million officials will be using government’s secure email, which seeks to ban use of popular email services like Gmail and Yahoo! in official communication to safeguard critical and sensitive government data. A budget of Rs 100 crore has been allocated for the project.

Governments globally have been trying to secure their official communication post fallout of the Snowden saga, which contended the US intelligence agencies used a secret data-mining programme to monitor worldwide Internet data to spy on various countries, including India.

The government has even decided to make social media access to officials limited and keep it under high security settings. The notification tells officials clearly not to not post “offensive, threatening, defamatory, bullying, racist, hateful, harassing, obscene or sexist” dialogues on Twitter or Facebook. They are asked not to post any comment that would “cause damage to the organisation’s reputation.”

Employees will also have to update their mobile numbers so they can be reached at all times. The tight grip watch doesn't end here: auto save of passwords will be prohibited for security reasons. Forwarding government mails to personal mailboxes will also not be allowed.

Auto-save of password in the government email service will not be permitted due to security reasons. During zero hour on Tuesday in the Rajya Sabha, BJP MP Tarun Vijay congratulated the government for banning all third-party e-mail services for government officials. He said Gmail and Yahoo should be declared 'untrustworthy' for common citizens too.