Using outdated technology in Gujarat's business hub: A bureaucracy's CD obsession

By Rajiv Shah

This one was a shocker for me. I was talking with the principal of a government-supported school, and this person told me that the district education office (DEO) of Ahmedabad insists on having details of the high school examinations conducted in his school in a video format—and only on compact discs (CDs)!

This person told me informally that they have to first videograph the examinations conducted in their school. For every classroom where an examination is held, "a separate CD is to be provided." He told me that during the recent examinations, as many as 50 CDs, all containing videography of the examinations, were sent to the DEO office. "They just ran one of them and, finding it not working, returned the whole bunch, saying each one should be verified before being sent. In our school, only one computer has a CD drive. And imagine, they refuse to take things on pendrive. What a pain!" he told me.

I was left wondering: In the age of artificial intelligence, why is the Gujarat government—especially the education department—refusing to keep pace with the latest technology? Do they still have old computers with CD drives, an extinct thing now? Claiming to be one of the best tax collectors in India, is the state government just not bothered to use the money so collected for upgrading technology in government departments?

A couple of days earlier, I had taken my old desktop computer's CPU to a computer engineer because it was giving me trouble. After he repaired it, I wondered if he could also look into the CPU's CD drive, which wasn't working. In fact, the drive wasn't even opening. He laughed it off, saying, "Who uses CDs or DVDs nowadays? Why spend money on it? As long as a pendrive and an external hard disk are working with your CPU, that's good enough for you..."

A quick search on the net suggested that CD writers, and optical media in general, have been largely replaced by more convenient and higher-capacity storage methods, including USB flash drives, external hard drives, and cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox.

In fact, many modern computers, especially laptops, are no longer sold with built-in CD/DVD drives, making the use of optical media less convenient for the average user.

Actually, digital documents are now primarily prepared and shared electronically via email, messaging apps, and cloud platforms, which eliminates the need for physical media. While CD writers are still used in some niche applications—such as creating audio CDs for music enthusiasts, creating physical backups of data, or for use with older computer systems—their use for preparing everyday documents has become virtually non-existent.

A look into the CD's history showed that it originated following a collaboration between Philips and Sony, with the two companies agreeing to a standard format in 1979. The first commercial CDs and CD players were introduced in Japan and Europe in 1982, followed by the United States in 1983.

The format quickly gained popularity, surpassing vinyl records in sales by 1988 and cassette tapes by 1990, becoming the dominant music format. CD sales continued to grow, peaking around the year 2000. The decline of the CD began in the early 2000s with the rise of digital music formats, such as MP3s, and the introduction of devices like the iPod in 2001. CD sales began to fall sharply after their peak in 2002.

As of 2025, the percentage of government offices and businesses still using CDs for data preservation is extremely low. Only some lower-level or rural offices may still use CDs occasionally, primarily due to a lack of updated infrastructure, legacy systems, and offline archival habits.

Estimates suggest that their usage is <1% globally, though it may be slightly higher (1–3%) in specific bureaucracies with limited digital infrastructure. In the private sector, CDs are almost obsolete for data storage. Most businesses now rely on cloud storage and encrypted digital backups, though CDs might still be used for long-term archival in some regulated industries (e.g., healthcare, defense), where their usage is also around 0.5%.

The primary reasons why CDs are phasing out include low storage capacity (~700 MB), their physical degradation over time, limited compatibility with modern devices, and slower read/write speeds compared to modern alternatives.

Given this framework, I was left wondering: Are education department officials of Gujarat's biggest city so terribly outdated? What has happened to what are supposed to be major government efforts—including the e-Office Mission, DigiLocker, and the National Digital Preservation Programme—which prioritize digital record-keeping and cloud or tape-based digital archiving, not physical media like CDs?

In fact, even the National Archives of India is actively digitizing physical records, moving away from physical media to digital repositories. In fact, CDs were never a mainstream approach for official digital preservation; the shift has been toward centralized digital repositories, ensuring secure, version-controlled access.

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