Tag: DeitY

In the Information Age, the winner of the game is the one who takes the lead in innovation. Countries and corporate investors are proactively looking to push talented individuals and companies to create the next revolutionary product. Never has been the pace of innovation this fast. In just the last decade, we have seen radical changes in technology especially in the consumer electronics field. Internet has not just connected the world together it has also allowed for the proliferation of knowledge and made the world a globally accessible marketplace. Luckily for India, it is already a part of the ground-level innovation game called start-ups. Now the Indian government is planning to give an adrenaline shot to the innovation process in the country.

The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) is planning to set up a Rs. 10,000 crore fund for innovation and development purposes in the fields of electronics and IT. The announcement was made by DeitY secretary R. S. Sharma at InfoComm 2014.

The government will partner with the existing venture capitalists to select the start-up where it would invest the fund. The government is also looking towards strengthening Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to promote the development of the sector.

The present government is actively engaging with the industry to grow India’s technical might. The Digital India program is an audacious plan by the government to boost information interconnectivity across the nation. By investing in innovation, the government strengthens the nation’s ability to create its own technology as well as reduce dependency on technological import from other nations. India currently imports electronics worth $100 billion, which is expected to go up to $400 billion by 2020 which will be more than the bill for importing oil. If India forms an encouraging technological ecosystem that supports research and production of the products, it will lead to a considerable reduction in the import bill.

If the government is serious about innovation then, it should also invest heavily in green energy technology as that will lead to severe cuts in the bill for fuel import. By aggressively pushing for a green energy, India can become a frontrunner in changing the future of the world. The government should heavily subsidise green car production and off-grid electricity solutions instead of giving billionaires like Adani a loan of $1 billion for a coal project. The government should rather invest in citizens of the country who pay for that money in taxes. The foundation of an innovation fund by the government is an encouraging and appreciable step, but it needs to do a lot more to make this country into a technology frontrunner.

The recent news of email hacking and unethical intrusion of personal accounts by foreign governments has spooked the Indian Government. The government has approved a proposal by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) to establish a secure and encrypted email service for government officials.

The government had previously instructed the officials to use the email service provided by NIC for official correspondence. It had also issued a directive to not forward official mail to personal email accounts. This was done to prevent leaks of sensitive government data to third parties.

Now the government wants to bring the official secure email service to five million officials. The service is currently available to one million officials DeitY is in the process of expanding it. The budget for the project is Rs.100 crores, and it will be utilized to expand infrastructure and ramp up security of servers.

The National Information Center (NIC) will be responsible for the delivering the service. It will handle email service for all departments except the Ministry of Defense which has its own secure email service. The External Affairs ministry too might get its own secure service as it deals with sensitive diplomatic correspondence.

The Edward Snowden revelations last year about the secret data-mining program by US intelligence agency to monitor worldwide Internet data led to these developments. Governments around the world are looking for ways to secure official communication and preventing data theft. Recently a Russian gang leaked a massive password database of millions of email accounts and this also led the government to take these measures.