MeitY looks to set up National Government Cloud to store sensitive govt, defence data locally

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is looking to create the National Government Cloud to store sensitive data such as government and defence-related data locally as the first step toward data localisation.

"The first step towards data localisation for the government is to store all data being generated by various Central government, State government and PSU agencies within India," a request for proposal (RFP) document floated to select an infrastructure engineering and design agency for programme management said.

This comes at a time when Big Tech companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon have been lobbying the Indian government to relax data localization rules proposed in the now-withdrawn Personal Data Protection Bill 2019.

The government withdrew the bill, which had been under consideration for years, in August of this year, claiming that many provisions of the bill, such as data localisation, hardware authenticity clauses, and so on, went beyond the purview of data protection.

Why the govt wants it

The National Informatics Centre (NIC), the MeitY-affiliated body that floated the tender, explained that data consumption in the country increased dramatically between 2015 and 2022.

"The massive amount of data being generated can have benefits as well as security and privacy concerns. Data-gathering practices are often opaque and complicated, with users having little control over them. In addition, the misuse of sensitive data such as government and defence-related data has led to working on solutions for data localisation," the NIC explained in the RFP.

The setup

According to the RFP, the government will establish a network of hyper scale data centres, which are massive facilities built by companies with vast data processing and storage needs, to create the National Government Cloud.

"For this, there could be a focus on existing hyperscalers, as hyperscalers have the required experience and expertise to setup and manage such infrastructure at large scale. And many private, hybrid cloud setups leverage existing hyperscalers. The main difference is that the same infrastructure is not used by other clients," Mrina Rai, Principal Analyst at technology research firm ISG told Moneycontrol.

These data centre campuses, each with a capacity of 200 MW, will be set up in various locations across the country through a public-private partnership (PPP) model. The NIC will serve as the project's technical partner.

These data centres will support a variety of business applications and activities, such as:

1. Personal data management
2. Email and file sharing
3. Productivity applications
4. Customer relationship management
5. Enterprise resource planning and databases
6. Big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning
7. Virtual desktops, communications, and collaboration

The ministry is currently looking for an agency to prepare a detailed project report (DPR). Following the approval of the DPR, an international bidding process will be used to select a PPP partner.

"This tender is more about appointing someone who can look after the project management side. It could be a service provider like TCS, Wipro or even a consulting firm with program management capabilities like PwC, KPMG," Rai explained.

According to the RFP, the agency will also be in charge of managing the entire implementation process, as well as collaborating with NIC on permissions and other matters.

India and cloud adoption

This proposal is not exclusive to India; other countries around the world have already implemented 'cloud first' policies.

According to a World Bank report, the United Kingdom already has such a policy in place, with ministries empowered to choose the best cloud solution for their needs based on security, flexibility, and value for money.

"This proposal is in line with other developed countries who have their own secured cloud setup," Rai said.

In terms of cloud adoption, a 2019 Gartner study identified India as one of the lagging nations. The study also showed that countries like the United States and Brazil performed better in this regard.