In a bid to improve IT infrastructure of government departments, the Ministry of Electronics and IT is preparing a plan to help them access cloud-based services from empanelled service providers.
The ministry has already empanelled 11 cloud service providers and a model document on how to access services from these empanelled entities is being prepared, according to a senior official. “Government departments and ministries will have a ready structure and they can customise the agreements with them as per their needs,” the official said.
Currently, as many as 250 government departments use data centres of the National Informatics Centre (NIC). In view of the government’s thrust on offering various e-governance services to citizens through online platforms, using services of the empanelled service providers can speed up the delivery process.
The empanelled service providers include Microsoft India Pvt. Ltd, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India Ltd, IBM India Pvt. Ltd, Tata Communications Ltd and Sify Technologies Ltd, among others. They will offer cloud services to government offices for an initial period of two years.
As the government is pushing its e-governance initiative at a record speed, this framework will help in imparting government services to citizens at a faster pace.
The initiative will help government departments and ministries move towards a pay-per-use model. Experts believe that allowing private firms to offer cloud computing services to government department will increase competition in this space.