National Informatics Centre

The National Informatics Centre (NIC) was initially established in 1976 by Late N Shesagiri under the Electronics Commission of India. It was subsequently transferred under the then Planning Commission of India and eventually came under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Additional Secretary Late N Shesagiri is credited with being the first person in India to implement a network system known as NICNET. It is the technological partner of the Government of India and is recognised for assisting the Indian government in embracing information technology in the 1990s. Additionally, it has assisted in the dissemination of e-governance to the general public.

For the fiscal year 2018–19, it operated with an annual budget of 11.5 billion yen, which is equivalent to $150 million USD. The majority of this is allocated to providing free services to various departments within the government.

Following the establishment of the Centre for Smart Governance (CSG) by the central government of India in May 2019, state governments in India have been given the directive to seek advice from the CSG for any IT initiatives on which they had previously sought advice from the NIC and private enterprises. Some people claim that government sources have said that “NIC is said to be unable to scale up.” However, the reality is that some vested interests want to curtail the role of NIC in the Indian IT arena, and Rajeev Chawla, Additional Chief Secretary (e-Governance), was quoted as saying that “CSG will be an analogue to NIC.”

NICNET

Through its Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Network, known as NICNET, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has established institutional linkages with all of the Ministries and Departments of the Central Government, as well as those of the State Governments, Union Territories, and District administrations of the country.

The National Information and Communications Network (NICNET) is a satellite-based wide area network and covers the entire country (WAN).

The National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been instrumental in steering e-Governance applications in Government Ministries and Departments at the Centre, States, Districts, and Block levels through its use of NICNET. This has enabled an improvement in the quality of government services, increased transparency, promoted decentralised planning and management, and led to improved responsiveness to the needs of the people of India.

Direct peering between NICNET and BSNL, PGCIL, and Railtel has been finished in both Delhi and Hyderabad. This was done to save bandwidth on the internet and to provide speedier access to each other’s networks and data centres. The establishment of peering relationships with Google, Microsoft, and the Akamai Content Delivery Network has made it possible to have faster access to Google’s services as well as other significant international websites.

The reorganisation of the video conferencing network has made it possible to reduce the amount of time that is wasted waiting and to successfully manage large-scale important video conferences, such as the PRAGATI of the Honourable Prime Minister and the GST Council Meetings presided over by the Honourable Finance Minister, amongst others.

Remote Sensing Applications in GIS

The ability to construct and manage an inventory of everything on the globe or any information that is associated with a specific location is made possible by Geographic Information Systems (GIS). It’s possible that someone will ask, “Why is GIS so important?” Because, to put it plainly, location is important.

“When you put it on a map, people get it,” said Jack Dangermond, one of the co-founders of the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI).

Any spot on the planet has a plethora of information associated with it, not just in terms of the physical features that can be found there, but also in terms of the political, economic, and social information that can be found there. The process of visualising, analysing, and comprehending this data is made easier by the utilisation of GIS.

One of the ways that is frequently used for the purpose of obtaining physical data to be incorporated into GIS is remote sensing. Data is gathered from items on the earth by sensors located remotely, bypassing the need for any physical interaction. They accomplish this goal by identifying the energy that is reflected off of the surface of the earth, and they are commonly installed aboard satellites or aircraft. In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the prevalence, accuracy, and accessibility of remote sensing technology. This technology can be applied to a wide variety of engineering tasks.

To begin, engineers utilise remote sensing in order to assist them in determining the terrain of our planet. LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a technology that makes it possible to create photographs of the surface of the planet in three dimensions.

Domain register

Domain name registries are responsible for the upkeep of domain registration information. Domain registrars are contracted by domain name registries to provide registration services to the general public. When an end-user chooses a registrar to provide registration services, that registrar automatically becomes the designated registrar for the user’s preferred domain name.

In a central registration database, information regarding domain names can only be edited or removed by the registrar that has been designated to do so. It is not unheard of for an end-user to move registrars, which would initiate a domain transfer procedure between the registrars involved. This process is governed by certain domain name transfer policies and will require the end-user to go through a domain transfer.

There are a lot of domain resellers that enable you to sell domains, despite the fact that the specialised registrar is the only body that may change or delete information regarding domain names in the central register. However, there are a lot of domain resellers. In order to buy and sell domain names, you do not need to first become a designated registrar.

When a registrar registers a dot-com domain name for an end-user, the registrar is required to pay VeriSign, the registry operator for dot-com domain names, a maximum yearly cost of US$7.34 as well as an annual administrative fee to ICANN in the amount of US$0.18. The vast majority of domain registrars set the prices of their products and services so that they account for both the annual fees and the administrative costs that are required to be paid to ICANN. New organisations that do not already have a customer base have a difficult time breaking into the competitive bulk registrar industry because the entry barriers are so high. 

Conclusion

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in India oversees the operations of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which is an Indian government entity (MeitY). The NIC enables the delivery of government services to citizens and is a pioneer in the initiatives of Digital India by providing infrastructure, IT Consultancy, and IT Services to Central Government Departments and State Governments. These services include but are not limited to, architecting design, development, and implementation of IT Systems.