Amid coronavirus fears, techies get work-from-home breather as DoT relaxes norms
15 March, 2020
To permit IT and ITeS companies to permit their workers to work remotely amid the coronavirus outbreak, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has relaxed certain work from home (WFH) norms till April 30.
Now, these firms, which are considered by the DoT as Other PROVIDERS (OSPs) won't need prior permission from the DoT or be asked to pay much security deposit or abide by other strict rules beneath the norms for WFH facility.
Industry body Nasscom and leaders of the IT industry had requested the government to relax the norms to facilitate business continuity.
Among the norms required employees working at home to employ a virtual private network (VPN) provided only by authorised providers, likely as a result of sensitivity of the task, and also to prevent misuse of authority hiding behind unauthorised VPNs.
VPN technology, which was originally developed to allow remote users and branch offices to access corporate applications and resources, can be utilized by individuals to hook up to proxy servers in a different geographic location to stay anonymous online by protecting one’s identity and location.
Now, with the relaxation of norms, a worker of an IT or ITeS firm may use secure VPNs configured independently utilizing a static IP but can do so only from pre-defined locations.
The DoT document also said that the employees in the home will be treated as extended agents of the OSP or IT and ITes companies that they work for. Any violation of conditions would attract a penalty of up to Rs 5 lakh per WFH location which is in violation.
IT and ITes companies that violate the norms stand to have their OSP registration cancelled.
The DoT also insisted that employees working from home maintain all logs of activities and follow all the conditions mandated for OSP registration.
Many organisations were struggling in operationalising WFH because of their employees, due to the onerous compliance and technical requirements under the OSP regime prior to the norms were relaxed.
On Thursday, state-owned Software Technology Parks of India had issued an advisory to permit around 18-20 lakh employees of IT units registered with it to home based.
Corporates across sectors are asking their employees to work from home and adopting technologies like telepresence and video-conferencing to make sure business continuity.
Source: www.deccanchronicle.com
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