The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has reproached the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) for the delayed rollout of a secure telecom network to be used by central ministers and top government officials.

DoT has asked C-DOT to submit a compliance report on the project by February-end. DoT had tasked C-DoT for establishing the secure communications network three years ago. However, C-DoT has been unable to meet the rollout deadline of January 1, 2014, for the project as it has not been able to re-establish network’s biometric authentication system, which was termed as “user unfriendly and unreliable” during trials by senior government personnel.

To fast-track the project, DoT has asked C-DoT to incorporate a separate code based authentication system for all potential users in addition to biometrics-based authentication system.