The National Informatics Centre (NIC) was established in 1976 by Late N Shesagiri under the Electonics Commission of India and later moved under the then Planning Commission of India before coming under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY - Hindi: इलेक्ट्रॉनिकी और सूचना प्रौद्योगिकी मंत्रालय). Additional Secretary Late N Shesagiri was the first to introduce a network system in India called NICNET.^[8][9] It is the technology partner of the Government of India and has been credited for helping the Indian government embrace IT in the 1990s^[10] and has also helped disseminate e-governance to the masses^{[weasel words]}.^[11]

It had an annual budget of ₹11.5 billion (US$140 million) for the year 2018–19.^[2] Most of this is spent in free services to various Government Departments.

In May 2019, the government of India set up the Centre for Smart Governance (CSG), and state governments have since been advised to consult the CSG for IT projects they previously would have consulted the NIC and private firms for. Some claim that government sources have said "NIC is said to be unable to scale up", though the fact is that some vested interests want to curtail role of NIC in Indian IT arena and Rajeev Chawla, Additional Chief Secretary (e-Governance), was quoted as saying "CSG will be an analogue to NIC".^[12]

National Informatics Centre Services include:^{[citation needed]}

• Government Local Area Networks (LANs)
• Video Conferencing
• National Knowledge Network (NKN)
• Email & Messaging
• Remote Sensing & GIS
• Webcast
• Domain Registration
• National Cloud
• Command and Control
• NICNET
• Data Centre
• Security
• Block Chain Technology

NIC's Network, "NICNET",^[13] facilitates the institutional linkages with the Ministries/Departments of the Central Government, state Governments and District administrations of India.^{[citation needed]} NIC is noted for being the primary constructor of e-Government applications.^[14] It also manages the National Knowledge Network.

Data Centers and OfficesEdit

In 2018, NIC opened its fourth data center in Bhubaneshwar to complement its existing data centers in New Delhi, Hyderabad and Pune.^[3] In addition to the national data centres ,NIC has State Centres in 36 states and Union territories.^[15][7] This is supplemented by 708 district offices.^[7]

National Portal of IndiaEdit

NIC maintains the National Portal of India. The portal contains the Constitution of India,^[16] and has a design objective to a single point to access the information and services of the Government of India.^[9]

• Bhattacharya, Jaijit (2006). Technology In Government, 1/e. Jaijit Bhattacharya. ISBN 9788190339742. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
• Bhagavan, M.R. (1997). New Generic Technologies in Developing Countries. London & New York: Macmillan & St. Martin. ISBN 978-0-333-65049-3.
• Government, of India (2019). Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology — Annual Report 2018–19 (PDF) (Report). Government of India. Archived (PDF) from the original on 5 November 2019. Retrieved 6 November 2019.
• Malwad, N. M. (1996). Digital Libraries: Dynamic Storehouse of Digitized Information : Papers Presented at the SIS '96 15th Annual Convention and Conference 18-20 January, 1996 Bangalore. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9788122408980. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
• Prabhu, C. S. R. (2012). E-Governance: Concepts and Case Studies (6 ed.). PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. ISBN 9788120345577.
• Rituraj, Vishalakshi (2018). "e-Governance Plan: Impact and Changes". In Kumar, Puneet; Jain, Vinod Kumar; Pareek, Kumar Sambhav (eds.). The Stances of e-Government: Policies, Processes and Technologies. CRC Press. ISBN 9781351396189. OCLC 1064971921. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
• "Shri Rajesh Gera joins as Director General, National Informatics Centre (NIC)". Press Information Bureau. 1 June 2022. Retrieved 1 June 2022.</ref>

• National Informatics Centre