Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff announced yesterday (13) her request to deploy a secure electronic communications system aimed at strengthening privacy and avoiding spying of communications across federal government bodies.

"I have mandated the deployment of a secure email system throughout the federal government," the president tweeted. She added that this is "the first step to expand privacy and inviolability of official messages."

The Brazilian data processing body Serpro is responsible for decommissioning the current platform Microsoft Outlook and leading the development of the new platform, which has been procured following the news that communications between Rousseff and her key aides have been monitored by the US National Secutity Agency (NSA).

"A more secure messaging system is needed to prevent possible spying," Rousseff posted on Twitter.

Expresso, an encrypted communications suite, is already used by about 700,000 employees at a few government bodies. The bespoke system runs on the cloud platform maintained by Serpro and the intention is to make it more robust then roll it out across the entire federal administration departments.

The Expresso platform will also be used as the base of the Hotmail-like system that the government is also planning to offer to citizens.

According to the Communications minister, Paulo Bernardo, it is expected that all government bodies will swap the current email system by the new set-up by the second half of 2014.

Bernardo told newspaper Folha de São Paulo that the government has already told Microsoft that it will not renew its licensing agreement and that it will reinvest the savings in improving the in-house system.

As well as the changes in the email set-up, the Brazilian government is also planning to work with public telecommunications company Telebras on a future project that would allow the government to only use its own infrastructure for its communications.