Workshop on cloud computing conducted by NeGD, MeitY

The National e-Governance Division (NeGD), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) organized the 3rd batch of capacity building programme in Cloud Computing for government officers of Central Line Ministries, State/UT Departments, Mission Mode Project officers, e-Governance Project heads and State e-Mission teams. These workshops are in continuation of the series of trainings on Cloud Computing – a major emerging technology in the digital world. The workshops were held from September 15-16, 2022 at the Gujarat Institute of Disaster Management, Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

Twenty-two officers from eight States / UTs, across the Central Line Ministries and Governments of Delhi, Gujarat, Manipur, Kerala, Maharashtra, Goa, West Bengal and Bihar participated in the 2-day residential programme. Setting the tone of the programme, Ms. Shobha Ramesh, Course Director, NISG, asserted that the need to ensure security of data, management of environment for scaling of data, technology, reach and the standardizations to be followed thereof could not be ignored anymore in a world that is increasingly getting digitized. Sanjay Gaden, Head SeMT, Gujarat, highlighted the interoperability of the system and cloud computing’s role in scaling up e-governance. He also highlighted other advantages of this emerging technology, in the disaster management plans, data protection and during pandemics etc.

The workshop brought together an array of subject matter experts from the industry, academia and the government to speak on key subject matters – cloud architecture, basic building blocks of cloud computing, data explosion, potential risks and challenges pertaining to cloud deployment, cloud’s role in digitally transforming e-governance and how it can provide scalable and elastic infrastructure, assess data requirements, and help manage bid data through distributed computing. The workshop duly highlighted the challenges in service delivery and various factors which affect the delivery of service like infrastructure, capability, scalability, etc. Live demonstration on auto scaling of cloud usage and benefits of auto scaling were given as well.

Day 2 of the workshop focused on common issues and challenges encountered while coordinating with government departments and strategies to overcome them by the executioners, introducing the participants to MeghRaj – GI Cloud, empanelment of cloud service offerings of CSPs and cloud provider selection, MeitY’s guidelines for cloud and key questions while procuring cloud services and cloud services procurement through GeM. Through use of case studies on CoWIN, Poshan Tracker and Digilocker, presentations on components of the projects, how the platforms were scaled, precautions taken and how business continuity was planned for all the applications was discussed.

The workshop was the third in the series of Cloud Computing trainings conducted for government officers. Under its Capacity Building scheme, NeGD is executing thematic trainings in order to build capacities of government officers, at both the Central and State levels, to ensure the availability of adequate knowledge, appropriate competencies and skill-set to optimally utilise the huge benefits of cloud computing in e-Governance practices.

CT Bureau