Can Government Officials use Private Email ids for Official Correspondence?
SOMETIME ago I got a mail from a concerned Netizen,
“I notice, most of the officials in the CBEC/C.Excise/Customs give their personal email ids for getting the response/reply from the public. How can the Board/Dept. ensure that the emails received by their officers in to their personal email ids are forwarded to the other officers for necessary action. When the Govt. has the CBEC website, why cannot they get email ids with xxxxx.cbec.gov.in or xxxx.cenex.gov.in/cus.gov.in. Why none of the Members of CBEC nor respective Chief Commissioners thought of giving email ids to their Members/Officers in the field which is more secure and can be accessed by the other officials? I am sure, TAXINDIAONLINE can take up this matter with concerned and in future, we all can send our suggestions/reply to the official email ids and not to their personal email id.”
I replied to him,
“We had already taken up this matter several times – the officers express a lot of difficulties in accessing their official mail ids and they don't have the many features that gmail, yahoo etc have. Once we insist that they use only official email id, what will happen is, they will not share their personal ids and they will not open the official ones. I am told that the Department is planning to give an email id with digital signature to every officer.”
That was one year ago. Recently while reporting the 'Draft Point of taxation Rules', in -06-08-2010, I asked, “why are the government officers using private email ids and not the government ones.?”
And it is is understood that our comments are not taken kindly by the officers who use private email ids for official correspondence. Gmail is the hot favourite mail server for many government officers – maybe for its user friendly environment, but the moot question is, “should government business run through these private unsecured mail servers?” We understand that some Government Ministries have already banned the use of private email ids for official communication.
There may be nothing wrong in a government officer using a private email id for official communication, but the pride of the Government of India is involved. When a government officer uses a private email id, it means that he has no faith in the government id or the government is not able to provide him a reliable email id, both of which are shameful to the majesty of governance. And can the use of a private email id for official communication be treated as unfair promotion of a private enterprise by government? Tomorrow Google can advertise that many government officers in India use Gmail as their official mail!