Maharashtra government to store citizens’ data on Microsoft Azure Cloud

In an interesting initiative the government of Maharashtra has announced that it would use Microsoft's Azure Cloud to store citizen data under Digital locker scheme, online technology news site trak.in reported.

This would probably be for the first time that private data of citizens would be stored on third party Cloud servers. Till date the servers of National Informatics Center (NIC) network were being used by state as also central government for the purpose. The data stored on Azure cloud would be linked to users' Aadhaar numbers.

The digital locker scheme formed part of Narendra Modi's ambitious Digital India programme which aimed to make better use of technology to deliver improved governance to citizen's of India. As part of the programme, every citizen would be provided with the following:

• Shareable private space on a public cloud
• All digital resources universally accessible through cloud.
• All citizen entitlements to be available on the cloud to ensure easy access.
• All government documents / certificates to be available on the cloud.
• Portability of all entitlements for individuals through the cloud.

Maharashtra CM, Devendra Fadanvis, had last month announced that Microsoft would be setting up South Asia's largest data centres in Mumbai and Pune.

The system would be linked with UID (Unique Identification Number, or Aadhaar); all information would be seeded with the digital identity and would help get public services, Fadnavis said ET reported. He added, the digital information would be secure in digital lockers.

However, the announcement was short on details of how the information would be protected and structured. Microsoft pointed  by way of clarification, when asked for details, to a link saying the firm would offer its Office 365 and Azure services from local data centres by the end of 2015.

However, privacy experts are concerned over the lack of detail. While the placing of public documents - such as PAN, educational certificates and ration cards - on the public cloud was non-controversial, doing so with private documents like passports and medical information was not the same thing.

According to Sunil Abraham, executive director of Centre for Internet & Society, it looked like both Microsoft and the state would have unfettered access to all the contents of the digital locker of each citizen, including personal information.

He asaid this was a terrible mistake as it would centralise storage of personal information across silos controlled by different data controllers.