NIC developing e-mail server for all govt officers: Ajay Kumar

HYDERABAD: The NIC is building a massive server to boost capacity vis-a-vis official e-mail usage by central and state government officers, a senior official has said.

"NIC (National Informatics Centre) is developing an e-mail server for the whole government. Today, present e-mail server has kind of already exceeded its capacity. We are now creating a massive email server. "Slowly and slowly, people are being on-boarded onto this email server," Ajay Kumar, Additional Secretary, Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, said here.

"We do endeavour to make sure that all government officers use official one (email id) .... all government officers, central and state. We will offer this facility to states also.

"Because, when you are using private servers, your data is going outside country, which may be of strategic importance. Therefore, official work should be done on official e-mail servers," he said. States can have their own official e-mail servers or they can use central servers, the official said.

"NIC is the only agency (which has taken up job)...we have no objection if some other agency wants to do it as long as it is official. NIC is providing a service which can be availed," he said. The government had on August 28 announced e-mail service for its five million personnel in English and Hindi in accordance with the e-mail policy, which bars government employees from using private e-mail services due to security reasons.

"As part of the mandate under the Digital India programme, government will provide a secure email service to all its officials for secure communication. As of now the service will be offered to five million users. Currently, the user base is 1.6 million," Ministry of Electronics and IT had said in a statement on August 28. NEW DELHI: India is finalising dates for the trade policy forum (TPF) with the US, in which issues such as visa and greater market access for goods are expected to be taken up.

US authorities have sought fixing of the date for the meeting, Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.

Sitharaman, who held the Commerce and Industry portfolio before being named the Defence Minister in Sunday's Cabinet reshuffle, said: "We will have to talk with the US on trade policy-related matters. We will definitely give the dates and are discussing that."

After the Trump administration took power, this will be the first formal interaction between trade authorities of the two sides. The last meeting was held in October here.

The forum was set up in 2005 and the meeting is cochaired by the Indian commerce minister and the US Trade Representative (USTR), with an aim to expand bilateral trade and investment.

The four working groups under this forum are on intellectual property, promoting investment in manufacturing, services and agriculture.

In the previous meeting, both sides had committed to continue engagement to resolve issues related to visa, movement of professionals and totalisation pact.

Under this agreement, professionals of both will be exempted from social security taxes when they go to work for a short period in the other country.