Open Source Software To Be Used For E-Governance Projects

The Economic Times carries a report on a draft policy which says all new E-Governance projects should use open source software on computers and attached devices. The Department of Information Technology which is behind the draft has put forward the draft to hardware manufacturers and others before finalizing it.

A major benefit after this draft gets implemented is of course ‘saving money‘. Open source projects are available to use for absolutely no cost at all. In addition to that it would even give the implementing agencies control over their hardware and the ability to further customize it as per their needs. The report goes on to say that the Aadhar Project makes extensive use of Blackberry phones, a closed platform. It is ironic that the government has been taking steps to jeopardize the existence of Blackberry phones in India, and the same phones are being used in a very important government project.

India has been a supporter of Free and Open source software (FOSS) since a long time, but this is the first instance where a policy is being made to make the use of FOSS compulsory. India in fact has its own Linux distro named BOSS Linux which was developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing to deliver better security and display content in Indian languages. Even the government’s Rs. 1600 Sakshat tablet runs Android which is open source.

The Dept. of IT has been promoting the use of Open Standards for E-governance. Such standards avoid technology lock-ins and reduce costs involved in making applications available on different platforms. Another major benefit that India has is its major user base, i.e the population. The huge volume of people using these open standards would make them the most popular standards and hence compel other nations to accept them as well.

This policy would affect industry bigwigs like HP, IBM, Sun and others, they would have to supply hardware that works well with open source operating systems. This in turn would increase costs for these companies. Not just PCs but this policy includes printers, servers, chips, tablets and all other devices associated with computers. The e-governance market in worth $20 billion to MNCs in India.