Summary: President Dilma Rousseff requested the
deployment of the in-house communications platform across all federal
government bodies
By Angelica Mari ,Brazil Tech
Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff announced yesterday (13)
her request to deploy a secure electronic communications system aimed at
strengthening privacy and avoiding spying of communications across federal
government bodies.
"I have mandated the deployment of a secure email
system throughout the federal government," the president tweeted. She
added that this is "the first step to expand privacy and inviolability of
official messages."
The Brazilian data processing body Serpro is responsible for
decommissioning the current platform Microsoft Outlook and leading the
development of the new platform, which has been procured following the
news that communications between Rousseff and her key aides have been monitored
by the US National Security Agency (NSA).
"A more secure messaging system is needed to prevent
possible spying," Rousseff posted on Twitter.
Expresso, an encrypted communications suite, is already used
by about 700,000 employees at a few government bodies. The bespoke system runs
on the cloud platform maintained by Serproand the intention is to make it
more robust then roll it out across the entire federal administration
departments.
The Expresso platform will also be used as the base of the
Hotmail-lke system that the government is also planning to offer to citizens.
According to the Communications minister, Paulo Bernardo, it
is expected that all government bodies will swap the current email system by
the new set-up by the second half of 2014.
Bernardo told newspaper Folha de São Paulo that the
government has already told Microsoft that it will not renew its licensing
agreement and that it will reinvest the savings in improving the in-house
system.
As well as the changes in the email set-up, the Brazilian
government is also planning to work with public telecommunications company
Telebras on a future project that would allow the government to only use its
own infrastructure for its communications.