Business
Government's e-mail policy notified, Delhi HC told
New Delhi, March 13
The Delhi High Court was
on Friday informed by the central government that it has issued an
advisory on national e-mail policy for official communications of
government employees, with an objective of ensuring "secure access and
usage of data" by them.
A division bench of Justice B.D. Ahmed
and Siddharth Mridul was informed by the central government that the
e-mail policy was notified on February 18.
The department of
electronics and information technology and ministry of communication and
information technology said the use of e-mail accounts of external
service providers will be "prohibited for official communication" by
government employees.
"The e-mail policy of the government of
India lays down the guidelines with respect to use of email services. As
per the proposed policies, e-mail accounts will be given to all the
employees of the government and it will be mandatory for them to use
this e-mail account for all official communications," said the
government counsel.
Earlier,the court had asked the central
government to bring in an e-mail policy for government officials in
consonance with the Public Records Act in order to bar transfer of data
to a server outside the country.
The public interest litigation
(PIL) filed by former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader K.N.
Govindacharya, said that the use of e-mail accounts whose servers were
outside India and transfer of nation's official data using this medium
violated the Public Records Act.
Advocate Virag Gupta, appearing
for Govindacharya, alleged that officials were using social networking
sites and other e-mail accounts with service providers, whose servers
were outside India, for official communications instead of the
government server of the National Informatics Centre (nic.in).