Bhopal. It has been made mandatory for state government officers and employees to use e-mail generated by mailbox based private e-mail platform Zoho Mail. The state government will pay Rs 2,000 to Zoho for the maintenance of each box based e-mail ID. This decision has been taken in a meeting held by the State Electronics Development Corporation with the Centre’s NIC Bhopal.

It will be mandatory for every user to use the e-mail created by Zoho every month, otherwise if not used for 45 days, this e-mail will automatically become inactive. It is noteworthy that an e-mail ID without an e-mail box is mainly a forwarding address. This type of e-mail ID does not have its own personal inbox or server storage where the mails are stored and kept safe. All e-mails coming to this non-email box e-mail ID are immediately forwarded to another main mailbox.

It is used to hide the real email ID for privacy and security. There is no need to purchase separate server space or paid mailbox. This project is being conducted at the national level by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and National Informatics Centre, Government of India, under which government email accounts are being transferred (migrated) to Zoho’s cloud platform.

The government has chosen Zoho to upgrade the legacy email system. Its main objective is to enhance data security in government work, provide protection from cyber attacks and create a secure and modern cloud-based email system. Under this project, approximately 16.68 lakh official e-mail accounts of Central Ministries and Government Departments have been successfully transferred to Zoho enabled cloud platform. This also includes the Prime Minister’s Office. Now state governments are also being included in it.