India is all set to digitise its many government to citizen (G2C) services. But first, it has to safeguard its systems against high-profile hacking attacks. There will, after all, be a lot of citizen-centric information that can be tampered with, or simply deleted and lost.
The ambitious national e-governance plan (NeGP) of the central government will digitise most G2C services, like land records, vehicle registration, pension, passport, income tax, etc. Once completed, the plan will make government services accessible like never before.
However, imagine the implications if a state?s police records are hacked into or the central government?s pension records are not found. If the plan has the power to change the face of the G2C services, India?s vulnerability to spy or hacking attacks could derail the government machinery. Chinese GhostNet spy attack had after all infiltrated some of India?s most sensitive establishments (its embassies in various countries and tech-savvy institutions like National Informatics Centre). The National Knowledge Network, which was launched on Thursday, and will connect India?s largest research and institutional institutions through a high-speed broadband connectivity, may also be vulnerable. It is supposed to boost fast breeder reactor and open source drug discovery in the country, which is sensitive intellectual property work.
While securing the country?s network is a high priority item, there are several finer aspects that need to be looked into as far as the NeGP is concerned. One of the mission mode projects that have been recently announced is providing unique identification numbers to all citizens. It will eradicate the need to have multiple identities and documentation and the ID could be used to avail any kind of products or services that require identity proof. But consider this: a farmer takes a loan and defaults on it once. The record would always remain on his ID and come up every time he applies for any other service, be it government or private.
The government says the delay in completion of NeGP is partly because of the many finer aspects involved. We hope that is the case.
surabhi.a@expressindia.com