Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 15 - Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan Tuesday inaugurated the 'Email to All Employees' project, whereby over 475,000 government employees will get e-mail IDs in a phased manner.

More than 4,000 employees received their official email IDs here Tuesday through a web-based mail service using an open source software package.

Rathan Kelkar, director of Kerala's state IT mission that is implementing the project, said there would be an improvement in the efficiency of government functioning once this project is completed.

'We have already published a set of rules and policies regarding managing e-mails approved by the government based on the guidelines of the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances,' said Kelkar.

The project was developed on a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) platform, configured and tested for hardware and software and finally rolled out by the state-owned Centre for the Development of Imaging Technology (C-DIT).