Miscellaneous
Government requires all civil servants to correspond using emails
In yet another move towards digitising governance, after making Cabinet meetings paperless, the KP Sharma Oli-led government has initiated official transactions through an integrated email system.Tika R Pradhan
In yet another move towards digitising governance, after making Cabinet meetings paperless, the KP Sharma Oli-led government has initiated official transactions through an integrated email system.
The system was installed at the Prime Minister’s Office three years ago to handle the government’s electronic correspondence. After improving its features including security, the system is now ready for all the government bodies to use.
The system will now be managed by the National Information Technology Centre (NITC) where the Government Integrated Data Centre is located. The facility is expected to make government’s official correspondence more secure, faster and effective.
PM Oli held the first paperless Cabinet meeting in July. A Cabinet meeting on Sunday decided to publish a directive in the Nepal Gazette. The publication will provide legal validity for the electronic correspondence. Civil servants will be able to use official email also to seek leave and transfer, besides communicating other official activities.
Since electronic correspondence needs digital signature, the new email system supports it. The NITC has been authorised to issue digital signatures in coordination with Radiant InfoTech Nepal Pvt Ltd, said Sunil Poudel, director at the centre.
The PM’s Office introduced a digital working platform in November 2013 but it took three years to be fully functional. The PMO has been fully automated but documents from other ministries are received in hard copies.Once officials get familiar with the new system, the government will begin all correspondence through official email. The common email platforms currently in use for official transactions pose data security risks.
Hari Prasad Pokhrel, computer engineer at the IT section of the PMO, said the documents sent or received via official email would be in record for at least a decade even if they are deleted.The directive requires the server to be placed within the country. It also bars civil servants from linking their official email with any other foreign web sites including social media.
Hundreds of officials are using official emails created under the integrated system. Now they will require personal emails besides institutional ones. The current set-up of the integrated system can run as many as 500,000 emails, officials said.
However, there are challenges since some civil servants still cannot use computer and there are many without computer at their disposal.
“I think there are a handful of civil servants who are computer-illiterate,” said Ram Chandra Dhakal, spokesperson for the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.While Under-secretary Mukesh Regmi, who led the IT Section at the Prime Minister’s Office earlier, claimed that security of the information was the major challenge as the government has not invested much in infrastructure and human resource for IT.
The ministry is planning to train civil servants on automation and digital transformation. The NITC trains IT potential trainers at the ministries and departments so that they could make common staff computer-literate.