1.26 million govt email accounts shifted to Zoho, Lok Sabha told

THe authorities has migrated around 12.68 lakh functionary email accounts of various ministries and departments to a Zoho-based political platform, the Ministry of Electronics and info Technology (MeitY) informed the Lok Sabha on midweek.Of these, 7.45 lakh accounts belong to Central government employees, the ministry said in response to a separate question. This is a fraction of the total Central government workforce, which stands at 50.14 lakh employees, according to a Lok Sabha reply by Minister of State (MoS) for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary on December 8.In the written reply on Zoho platforms, MoS MeitY Jitin Prasada said the migration has been carried out through the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which remains the mandated provider of official email services for government ministries and departments. Zoho had been selected as the Master System Integrator to support a cloud-based email solution for government users. In 2023, MeitY floated a tender to move government email accounts from NIC’s email system to a secure cloud-based service. Zoho won the contract.MoS Prasada in his response also said that the government’s contract with Zoho ensures that the ownership of all data and intellectual property generated during the engagement remains with the government, with provisions for continuity and rollback when required.However, Prasada did not provide details on the total cost of the migration, including spending on software licences, infrastructure and training, nor the annual recurring expenses since the 2023-24 financial year.The ministry said Zoho’s email system has built-in security measures, with data encrypted both while being stored and while being sent. It also uses multi-factor authentication, geo-fencing and IP-based restrictions, along with protections against email spoofing. The service is designed to operate round the clock with a minimum uptime of 99.9%.To ensure business continuity, the service provider is required to maintain disaster recovery sites in different seismic zones located at least 500 kilometres apart, with defined recovery time and recovery point objectives, the government said.“The solution includes varied subscription plans (Standard, Business, Enterprise) along with integrated features like calendar management, task scheduling, and secure file sharing,” said Prasada in his answer.This comes as the government pushes to adopt swadeshi (indigenous) technology and reduce reliance on foreign platforms such as Google and Microsoft. Over the past few months, several political leaders and ministers like Amit Shah, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan have encouraged people to switch to the Chennai-based company’s platforms like Arattai and services including email, word processing, spreadsheets and presentation tools.During multiple cabinet briefings to the media, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has also repeatedly pointed out that the presentation for the briefing was prepared using Zoho spreadsheets.Zoho did not respond to HT’s email for comments.