Friday, November 14, 2014: Indian government is planning to save millions of dollars by switching to open source software applications very soon. The government is shifting its base from proprietary technology to open source technology, and in this process, open source programmes will receive a huge boost.
As a part of the Digital India initiative, the government is working on a policy in relation to boost open source software. A GitHub-like repository of software has also been proposed by the government and more collaborative development will be easier in this way. In a conversation with The Economic Times, secretary of department of electronics and information technology, RS Sharma said that open source will not be made a part of government ideology but whenever and wherever possible, open source will be used in government projects now.
He also confirmed the news that a repository like SourceForge is also getting developed, where source code of the software applications will be openly shared, and it will boost crowd source development of more applications, like GitHub. As we already know, GitHub and SourceForge are world famous repositories where software code is shared for open source projects, and then the code can be developed by several developers. According to experts, this move will boost egovernance further and open source software will help in more savings and the applications can be reused too.
As per an estimate by Gartner, Indian governments are expected to spend $6.4 billion on IT products and services in 2014 only. Sharma added that every consulting firm will be allowed to re-develop the software too and the policy is aimed at speeding up deployment of egovernance projects across government departments. Pramati Technologies’ founder and CEO, Jay Pullur said that open source is one of the best ways for “unpredictable financial commitments, as mentioned on ET.
Alchemy Business Solutions LLP director Venkatesh Hariharan said that if open source policy is implemented, then IT projects will be deployed faster, and projects will fail lesser and innovation will also be paced up. This company is focused on open source technology in India. According to open source experts, the government policy has been taken in right direction definitely, but its implementation needs extra care too.
