Data Centers and e-Governance: The Future

Data center infrastructure and services is a large, emerging market worldwide. However, when it comes to governance, currently a handful of countries have the basic infrastructure and policies, readily available to take advantage of data centers and become a global hub. Talking about India, data economy, provides a plethora of opportunities, via robust domestic data consumption/market. The digital revolution in India is moving ahead at a fast rate and the government’s prerogative of making India digitally active before the year 2019, means that e-Governance too will move at a faster rate. Hence, the future of the data centre market in India looks bright, as data centers will play a significant role in facilitating good governance and the full-potential realization of government projects like Make in India, Digital India, E-Governance etc. Current Scenario of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in India: Enhanced investment in the government’s ‘Digital India’ initiative, means that the use of ICT will accelerate rapidly, with the focus on the allowance of government services on mobile devices and increased use of high-speed networks, propelling the initiatives. The government has been working on the formulation of an efficient data center strategy, akin to that of Australia, that will help it, in delivering service to the citizen in a faster, more efficient manner. The government generates a massive amount of data that needs to be securely stored in data centers, due to the confidential nature of the information that is collected. Hence, lately, there has been a fast-paced growth in the sector of cloud-computing, with an unprecedented demand for storage space for data. This, in turn, has led to the proliferation of data centers and high-speed networks, across the country. The fact is that as the country is undergoing changes to move towards becoming a digital economy, there is an exponential growth of data happening, hence, the need of more storage capabilities, to accommodate the additional data is pertinent. Data centers, currently are aimed prominently at the improvement of government services delivery across the country, by the minimization of waste and changing the way government agencies consolidate/manage data. The state, as well as government agencies, need to next look at the virtualization of critical applications which are related to the delivery of important benefits. This step is important as it works towards the integration in cloud and delving services from there. The Future Progression: Data center infrastructure management and virtualization are bringing to the fore new ways of working in data centers. However, it is important to note that there is a demand of top quality performance, resilience, security and operational efficiency for these applications, for which we suggest a hybrid model, as opposed to complete cloud-computing reliance. Since data center providers are gearing to play an important role in government operations, the government also needs to analyze various potential, concealed dangers, risks that can impair strategic/internal operations and the financial performance of state/centre sanctioned operations. The main objective hence needs to be to make processes simple, which can lead to the automation of government delivery services by implementing technologies that help governments boost data center efficiency. Thus, enabling e-Governance services to become faster and cost-effective, there will be an acceleration in the use and adoption of ICT, turning the nation into an Information society