Amazon's AWS to help Telangana govt to go paperless 

Tech giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced on Friday that it has received cloud service provider (CSP) empanelment from India’s Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology (MeitY) for cloud services provided using the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region. 

The company noted in a release that the AWS Asia-Pacific (Hyderabad) Region is the second AWS Region in India to be fully empaneled by MeitY. In 2017, AWS India became the first global CSP in India to receive full empanelment for its cloud service offerings after the AWS Asia-Pacific (Mumbai) Region completed MeitY’s STQC (Standardization Testing and Quality Certification) audit.

Shalini Kapoor, director and chief technologist for the public sector with AWS India Private Limited said in a statement, “India’s economic growth is tied closely to digital transformation. Cloud computing and adoption of technologies such as generative AI are important for the growth of the country’s digital economy, helping drive digital transformation at scale, modernizing governments, innovating securely and sustainably, and developing future skills.”

A MeitY official noted that this partnership with AWS would aid the Digital Public Infrastructure built by the government. 

“With both AWS Regions in India empaneled by MeitY, AWS is providing customers more choice to access resilient, secure, and low-latency cloud infrastructure, while offering more ability for AWS Partners to develop innovative solutions and address customer needs,” AWS’ Kapoor explained.

Srinivas Pendyala, director of e-government initiatives with the ITE&C Dept in the Government of Telangana, affirmed this and added, “The ITE&C Department is planning to introduce a new paperless secretariat initiative in Telangana, where all approvals pertaining to government-related files within a department will henceforth be completely paperless and digital. This initiative would help achieve a smooth and efficient workflow for approvals and information exchange between various departments.”

AWS’ India investments

AWS has planned an investment of US $12.7 billion (Rs 1,05,600 crores) in cloud infrastructure in India by 2030. The company added that this includes allocating more resources to data center infrastructure, which will create an estimated average of 131,700 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs across industries like construction, facility maintenance, and engineering roles, among others. 

Furthermore, AWS’s investments in cloud infrastructure is expected to contribute $23.3 billion to India’s total GDP by 2030, the company noted.