Govt Kicks Off Bid To Develop National Govt Cloud, Plans 200 MW Data Centres

The government has kicked off efforts to build the National Government Cloud to firewall all data generated by various arms of the government, including sensitive defence-related data.

As part of this, authorities have floated a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the selection of an infrastructure engineering and design agency for setting up the cloud infrastructure. 

The project is part of a larger project under which the agency will also oversee the creation of an underlying network of hyper scale data centres with a total capacity of approximately 200 MW across multiple locations in the country. 

“Ministry of Electronics Information and Technology (MeitY) through the authority invites proposals for the selection of a Program Management Agency…for setting up 200 MW capacity hyperscale data centre campuses at various locations in India for building National Government Cloud on Public Private Partnership (PPP) model,” said the RFP.

The tender will be open for submission of proposals till November 15 and will subsequently be opened on the next day (November 16). 

Citing security and privacy concerns, the proposal said that apprehensions over misuse of sensitive government data had led to steps for the development of solutions for data localisation.

A ten-year span has been set for the implementation of the project. While the National Informatics Centre (NIC) will serve as the technical partner, the National Informatics Centre Services Incorporated (NICSI) will be the nodal implementation agency of the project. 

The Stepping Stone

Through this prospective network of hyperscale data centres, the government aims to create an overarching ecosystem to efficiently store and manage data generated on government and semi-government platforms, including public sector undertakings (PSUs).

Hyperscale data centres are massive business-focused facilities that largely cater to big tech majors such as Google, Amazon and IBM. These centres are designed to scale and support robust applications and are capable of possessing network speeds of up to 40 Gigabytes per second.

The proposal called data centres an important element of the country’s digital ecosystem and noted that these centres will support a slew of business applications including:

• Personal data management
• Email and file sharing
• Productivity applications
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and databases
• Big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning
• Virtual desktops, communications, and collaboration services

At the outset, the agency will prepare the detailed project report (DPR) and will assist the project with getting the necessary approvals. Once the DPR is approved, then, a PPP partner will be appointed through an international bidding process.

“The agency would be required to undertake the monitoring and performance measurement of the end-to-end implementation through master schedule…. The total tenure of the consultancy shall be for ten 10 years (starting with initial 5 years and further extendable to next 5 years on the prevailing needs and the performance),” added the RFP. 

The project will cut the government’s dependence on big tech players for deploying its systems. While NIC looks after a majority of government platforms, including e-Courts, emails for officials and National Power Portal, the data invariably, at times, could be routed through the servers of these cloud service providers.

With government critical data at stake, the government appears to have embarked on developing its own system to stop the routing of important data through servers abroad. 

It is also pertinent to note that NIC has ‘MeghRaj’, a national cloud initiative, which aims to scale the hosting of various government applications and services on the cloud. It is a common cloud platform aimed at accelerating the adoption of e-Governance by local bodies and state governments without deploying significant IT infrastructure.

But, with the National Government Cloud project, the centre also wants to take control of the hardware space to plug any data leakage and give impetus to its data localisation pitch.

Eye On Big Tech?

The move to set up a national government cloud comes at a time when the government is locked in a growing confrontation with big tech players. 

Previously, the two sides were locked in a logjam over the now-nixed Personal Data Protection Bill 2019. The erstwhile Bill had proposed sweeping changes to the Indian digital landscape, including stringent data localisation norms that would have mandated big tech companies to set up servers in the country. 

After intense lobbying by the likes of Google, Meta, and Amazon, the proposed Bill was withdrawn, Now, the government plans to bring a new Bill in its stead.

In a veiled attack on big tech players, the proposal noted, “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, misuse of sensitive data such as, government and defence-related data has led to working on solutions for data localisation.”

Overall, India is also witnessing a growing demand for computing power which has led to a spurt in the establishment of data centre facilities in the country. This has led to conglomerates, including Adani Group and the realty empire Hiranandani Group joining the race to set up data centres across the length and breadth of the country.

Recently, payments major PhonePe said that it was close to investing up to $200 Mn in building data centres across the country. 

India, so far, has 138 data centres spread across 11 Mn sq ft. with an installed capacity of 737 MW. As more and more players trickle in, the number of data centres is expected to grow to 183 by 2025, with a total capacity of 1,752 MW.

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