Kathmandu, February 7
The spokesperson for the Nepal government, Communications and Information Technology Minister Rekha Sharma, says the government does not have keys to electronic data centres where the information collected from the public is kept.
Sharma’s comment further exposes Nepal’s poor cybersecurity status which is reminded by government websites getting frequently hacked.
Inaugurating the new edition of the CAN InfoTech, an annual exhibition of information technology, in Kathmandu on Tuesday, Minister Sharma accepted there are serious questions about the safety of the government data.
“We talk a lot about nationality, but how can we preserve it in terms of data security,” she questioned, “The ministries are using sensitive software programs, but we don’t know where their keys [to the data centres] are.”
She also said many Nepali skilled workers are going abroad while the government has been forced to hire such people from other countries.
Nonetheless, the minister claimed the government is working hard to make the IT sector well-managed, adding a new bill about the sector is being drafted.
