The National Informatics Centre (NIC) is an Indian government department under the

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITy) is an executive agency of the Government of India, Union Government of the India, Republic of India. It was carved out of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (I ...

(MeitY). It provides infrastructure, IT Consultancy, IT Services including but not limited to architecture, design, development and implementation of IT Systems to Central Government Departments and State Governments, helping in implementing the digitization initiatives of

Digital India Digital India is a campaign launched by the Government of India to make its services available to citizens electronically via improved online infrastructure and by increasing Internet connectivity. The initiative includes plans to connect ru ...

. The organisation also carries out research in the IT domain and recruits various scientists and Scientific/Technical Assistants. The organisation's primary function is to cater to ICT needs at all levels of governance and facilitate digital access to government services for citizens.

History

The National Informatics Centre (NIC) was established in 1976 by Narasimaiah Seshagiri under the Electronics Commission of India and later moved under the

Planning Commission of India The Planning Commission was an institution in the Government of India which formulated India's Five-Year Plans, among other functions. In his first Independence Day speech in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his intention to diss ...

before coming under the

(MeitY - ). Additional Secretary Narasimaiah Seshagiri was the first to introduce a network system in India called NICNET. The organisation designs and develops IT systems for various government bodies, helping in the modernization of management and administration processes of these government bodies as the country underwent Globalisation. The organisation provides digital access to various government services to the citizens.. It had an annual budget of for the year 2018–19. Most of this is spent in providing free services to various Government Departments.

Infrastructure and services

National Informatics Centre Services include: * Digital Government Research Centre (DGRC) * Government Local Area Networks (LANs) * Video Conferencing * National Knowledge Network (NKN) * Mobile Competency Centre * Email & Messaging * Remote Sensing & GIS * Webcast * Domain Registration * National Cloud * Command and Control * NICNET * Data Centre * Security * Block Chain Technology NIC's Network, "NICNET", facilitates the institutional linkages with the Ministries/Departments of the Central Government, state Governments and District administrations of India. NIC is the primary constructor of e-Government applications. It also manages the

National Knowledge Network National Knowledge Network (NKN) is a multi-gigabit national research and education network, whose purpose is to provide a unified high speed network backbone for educational and research institutions in India. The network is managed by the Nation ...

Data centers and offices

In 2018, NIC opened its fourth data center in Bhubaneshwar to complement its existing data centers in New Delhi, Hyderabad and Pune. In addition to the National Data Centres, NIC offices include Head Quarters situated in New Delhi and has State Centres in all 36 states and Union territories. This is supplemented by 741 district offices.

National cloud

National Informatics Centre developed GI Cloud named as MeghRaj. This project was launched by Government of India for cloud computing in February 2014. MeghRaj Cloud offers a variety of service model like Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Services (Saas), Virtual servers, Kubernetes containers, DevOps, etc. In April 2023,

Jio Platforms Jio Platforms is an Indian Multinational corporation, multinational technology company, headquartered in Mumbai. It is a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. Established in 2019, it acts as a holding company for India's largest mobile network op ...

secured a 350 crore contract to manage and improve the cloud services of National Informatics Centre (NIC) for five years for onsite maintenance at various Data Centers in Delhi, Pune and Bhubaneswar.

Centres of Excellence

The following CoE(Centre of Excellence) has been established: *Artificial Intelligence *Blockchain Technology *Microservices *Data Analytics *Application Security NIC established the Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence in 2019 to explore more opportunities for AI applications in governance. In 2020, the Union Government and NIC has launched the Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Blockchain Technology in Bengaluru.

Bharat Maps

Bharat Maps is a

web mapping Web mapping or an online mapping is the process of using, creating, and distributing maps on the World Wide Web (the Web), usually through the use of Web GIS, Web geographic information systems (Web GIS). A web map or an online map is both served ...

service maintained by the National Informatics Center. The project was implemented in the 2004-09 five-year cycle and the data is derived from

Survey of India The Survey of India is India's central engineering agency in charge of mapping and surveying.Registrar General of India Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, founded in 1961 by the Government of India Ministry of Home Affairs, for arranging, conducting and analysing the results of the demographic surveys of India including Census of India and Lin ...

and

Indian Space Research Organization The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO ) is India's national space agency, headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka. It serves as the principal research and development arm of the Department of Space (DoS), overseen by the Prime Minister o ...

. The maps are used by various government departments for official purposes and is also available for the use of consumers.

National Portal of India

NIC maintains the National Portal of India. The portal contains the

Constitution of India The Constitution of India is the supreme law of India, legal document of India, and the longest written national constitution in the world. The document lays down the framework that demarcates fundamental political code, structure, procedures ...

, and has a design objective to a single point to access the information and services of the Government of India.

References

Sources

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External links

* {{Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (India) Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (India) E-government in India Government agencies established in 1976 1976 establishments in India