Page 11 - Informatics, January 2022
P. 11
eGov Products & Services
Government Email
Service
Enabling secure communication channel
within the Government
Edited by MOHAN DAS VISWAM
mail forms the backbone for all e-Governance
initiatives and is the primary mode of
Ecommunication in the Government both at
The importance of Email the Centre and States. The Email policy of the
Government was released in February 2015 and
Service was evident during in accordance with its mandate, an Email ID will
be given to all Government officials which is
the ongoing pandemic as it provided by NIC along with 24x7x365 support. The
ensured that communication primary objective of the policy was to ensure that
Government data resides on Indian servers and
within the Government is within the control of Government of India. The
Government Email Service is enhanced through
not impacted by COVID-19 an open-source solution in accordance with the
“Policy on adoption of Open-source software
It is great to see that NIC’s email system
and continues to operate for Government of India” by MeitY. This provides has near universal coverage. When NIC
seamlessly. The service is the strategic control to GoI over the Email Service. decided to migrate from proprietary email
to open source based inhouse developed
largest service of its kind Features of Government Email system in 2015 there were several who
offered by any Government Service doubted its ability to scale to needs of
lakhs of Government users or provide
The Email Service provided by NIC is as user friendly access as compared to other
globally. per the global standards ensuring security, commercially available email suites. It is
performance, availability, redundancy, and heartening to see how the email system
service continuity in addition to a rich feature has been providing flawless service without
set. The prominent features of the current service interruption. Apart from its availability, I
are Internationalized Domain Name, Support in wish to mention unique security features
Multiple Languages, User Persona, Standardized and functionalities which has kept email
R.S Mani Office Templates etc. The Government Email data secure despite continuous attempts
Dy. Director General infrastructure is under constant attack by hackers. to breach the system. My compliments to
rsm@nic.in Some of the figures relating to threats addressed those who are working behind the scene to
by the GoI Email Service are shown in Figure 1. provide an email system which can be rated
The security layers offered in Government Email among the best.
Service are illustrated in Figure 2.
Dr. Seema Khanna Dr. Ajay Kumar, IAS
Dy. Director General Security Technology Used Secretary
seema@nic.in The incoming Email traffic passes through Ministry of Defense, GoI
Firewalls, IPS & WAF for filtering of malicious
contents and then passes on to the authentication
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