Intelligence program NATGRID will be operational by December 31, 2020, Minister of State for Home Affairs, G. Kishan Reddy informed the Parliament in response to a question. The physical infrastructure is planned to be completed by March 31, 2020. NATGRID has already developed an application software for proof of technology which is yet to be fully rolled out. In September this year, Shah had held a meeting to discuss NATGRID's revival and said he wants it to be operational by end of 2020. NATGRID has been allocated Rs 84.80 crore for FY2020. Workforce: 53 governments officers have been appointed against a sanctioned strength of 119 posts. 21 consultants have been deployed against 123 contractual posts. Central agencies will have access to NATGRID data in the first phase. It's unclear what exactly the first phase is currently. But according to an answer in Parliament given in July 2014 by the then Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju, the plan was to connect 10 user agencies (listed below) to NATGRID by giving them access in the first phase, called the Horizon 1 phase. What is NATGRID? NATGRID is the national intelligence grid which would link multiple public and private databases together, and make this data available to intelligence agencies. Its mandate is to "automate the existing manual processes for collation of intelligence information by connecting over 21 data sources like telecommunication, Banking, Airlines, etc." It was created to link databases to "collect[ing] actionable intelligence to combat terrorism and internal security…
