TCS software to ensure security of people’s data in secretariats
VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh Gram Volunteers/ Ward Volunteers and Village Secretariats/ Ward Secretariats Department (GSWSD) has appointed Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for the implementation of software applications through a tender process, to protect the integrity of the data collected by it.
“The TCS develops and maintains various software components of the GSWS Department. All the data protection laws are being followed thoroughly in the development of the software architecture. e-Gov team has gone through the architecture of data collection and vindicated its robustness,’’ the government said.
Amid the ongoing row over collection of data by volunteers, the government said to ensure the last-mile delivery of welfare schemes and other citizen-centric services in an efficient and effective manner, it had evolved the system of GSWS with 1.60 lakh staff from eight departments and 2.54 lakh volunteers functioning across 15,004 secretariats.
The GSWS system aims to provide government services at the doorstep of the people. For this, basic information about the citizens is collected through various applications developed by the department.
During data collection, the demographic data of the citizen is fetched from the Aadhaar server after the biometric authentication of the citizen and all the data is encrypted and stored at the State Data Centre (SDC). The data is sent to the SDC through APIs from the apps and is stored there with multiple layers of security protocols and encryption.
All the apps are developed with high-level security features and the data is protected at all times. The SDC is located in a secure building with controlled access to the premises. The data which is collected is shared with different departments only after an agreement is signed with special terms in regard to data safety between GSWS and the respective department, it added.