The Nepal government has strictly directed all federal, provincial, and local level offices to stop scanning official documents with mobile scanning applications due to data safety concerns.
The Office of Prime Minister and Council of Ministers has told all federal, provincial, and local government bodies to not use mobile scanning apps for official documents. The IT branch of office sent out a circular to ensure digital security and data privacy of government work.
Risks of External Mobile Apps
The circular mentions that using various mobile scanning apps like CamScanner, which are easily available in market, carries high risk of sending and storing scanned documents on foreign servers. This can leak important policy decisions, confidential notes, and other sensitive papers, which can create serious challenge to national security.
According to PM office, it is duty of every government office and employee to protect the privacy and safely archive official documents. Lately, there has been a growing trend of scanning documents or taking photos with mobile cameras to use them for official letters and decisions. The office said this has increased risk of sensitive information reaching to unauthorized people.
National Security Concerns
Deepa Dahal, who is Press and Research Expert for the Prime Minister, said that scanning government documents through mobile apps can badly affect national security and data privacy.
She explained that most of these mobile apps have direct access to user data. There is no clear information or reliability about which servers these apps use and what kind of security standards they have for storing data. Therefore, using such apps for government documents is highly risky.
Dahal added that state documents going out digitally is a serious violation of data privacy. She said this decision must be taken as a necessary step for national security rather than just a simple technical caution.
AI Disclaimer: This article was originally published on https://bajarkochirfar.com. It has been translated with the help of AI. For the best understanding and accurate facts, we recommend reading the original Nepali version.
