Indian DEITY plans 14 Exabyte cloud storage rig

Government 'Digital Locker' will hand 1GB to each citizen

India last week launched a national Digital locker, a kind of Dropbox clone it hopes will simplify citizens' interactions with government.

The service offers a Gigabyte for eligible citizens, which isn't a lot. Until you multiply it by India's 1.4 billion citizens and get to a potential for 14 Exabytes if the system ever fills up. Of course not all will be able to, or choose to, use the service, but there's still potential for this to become a truly ginormous storage rig.

DigiLocker may be a little scary, as registration requires one to use one's “Aadhaar Number”, the 12 digit identification number the government uses to identify Indian citizens. It's intended that citizens will use DigiLocker to store correspondence with government. The government, in turn, will digitally sign documents in the lockers to ensure their authenticity.

The system's designed to be accessible from mobile devices, an essential choice in India where smartphones outnumber PCs handily and internet access is far more easily obtained over the air than a wire.

India's Department of Electronics & Information Technology, which glories in the acronym DeitY, oversees the project. ®