The IT Ministry has unveiled a ‘Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India’ that will encourage the formal adoption and use of Open Source Software (OSS) in government organisations.

Formulated by the Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY), the policy will enable freedom of use and re-use of ICT assets along with availability of strong OSS community support.

Currently, most e-governance solutions are developed using Closed Source Software (CSS), which is licensed under the exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. In that the users' right to make modifications, sharing, studying, redistribution or reverse engineering is limited.

However, the Centre wants all its organisations to compare both OSS and CSS options on capability, strategic control, scalability, security, lifetime costs, and support requirements, under the new policy.

“Many of the OSS codes are done by Indians, so it will give fillip to such people and also new ecosystem of OSS will emerge in terms of maintenance of these OSS centres,” Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters.

More transparency He said this policy would also make greater transparency towards government transactions.

Some of the points in the policy said that all future requests for proposals of e-governance projects shall include a mandatory clause for considering OSS as a preferred option, adding that suppliers shall provide justification for exclusion of OSS in their response.

This policy would also provide a framework for the rapid and effective adoption of OSS, ensure strategic control in e-governance applications and systems, and reduce the total cost of ownership of projects, it said.

To achieve these objectives, the policy aims to establish a suitable mechanism for the available OSS that includes institutional mechanism, partnership with industry, academia and OSS community.

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