OSS to be preferred option in e-governance tenders
The department of electronics and information technology (DeitY) has come up with a policy on adoption of open source software (OSS) for government of India. The key objective of the policy is to provide a framework for rapid and effective adoption of OSS; to ensure strategic control in e-governance applications and systems from a long term perspective and to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of projects.
The nature of compliance for the policy is mandatory which means that the government of India organizations and departments has to mandatorily adopt the policy. The only exception to the non adoption of OSS will be specialized domains where OSS solutions meeting essential functional requirement may not be available or there is a strategic need to deploy propriety software or there is a lack of skill set in identified technology.
The policy states that all government organizations while implementing e-governance applications and systems must include a specific requirement in Request for Proposal (RFP) for suppliers to consider OSS as a preferred option in comparison to closed source software (CSS). Suppliers need to provide justification for exclusion of OSS in their response. The government shall also publish a policy framework for rapid and effective adoption of OSS covering prioritization of the application areas and illustrative list of OSS and OSS Stacks required for various functional areas.
The government of India (GoI) is implementing the Digital India programme which aims to make government services digitally accessible to citizens in their localities and to ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs. The OSS policy document is a step by government in this direction. The national policy on information technology, 2012 has for the first time mentioned that adoption of open standards and promoting open source and open technologies will be one of the objectives of government.
There are some states like Kerala, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal who have already advocated the use of open source in e-governance projects in more than one way. It needs to be seen that how will DeitY ensure the compliance of the policy and promote OSS.
---
Autor(en)/Author(s): Sameer Sachdeva
Quelle/Source: iGovernment, 07.04.2015
Bitte besuchen Sie/Please visit:
