Central government employees may soon be banned from using Gmail,Yahoo and other email service providers for official communication to prevent transfer of data to servers that are based abroad. The Central government on Thursday informed the Delhi High Court that a comprehensive policy on email use for official communication was being formulated . Government standing counsel Sumit Pushkarna also submitted the draft policy before the bench of justices B D Ahmed and Vibhu Bakhru on Thursday. Pushkarna assured the court that the policy would be finalised within four weeks. The submissions were made during a hearing on a plea filed by RSS ideologue K N Govindacharya regarding online privacy. Facebook,Google and other web service providers are also parties. It is an important issue. Do it fast. We are sure the new policy will be in line with the provisions of Public Records Act, the court said. The new policy is expected to be in line with the provisions of the Public Records Act which lays down guidelines for the management,administration and preservation of records of various government agencies. During a previous hearing,Govindacharyas counsel Viraag Gupta had alleged that government officials were using social networking sites,whose servers are outside the country,for official communications instead of using the government server provided by the National informatics Centre. The lawyer also submitted copies of official contact information of various ministries,which showed that ministers were using email IDs hosted by Gmail,Yahoo and others for official communication. According to the petitioner,the sensitive data would be stored on servers outside of the country and could be accessed by foreign governments. Advocate Gupta alleged that the Delhi Police,the Railways and others had created accounts on social networking sites despite government agencies being barred from doing so under the law. The next hearing is on October 30.
