Business Standard

Centre mulls switch to Open Standard

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Bibhu Ranjan MishraLeslie D'Monte Bangalore/ Mumbai
The Centre is in the final stages of adopting a national policy that will help government departments throughout the country exchange information seamlessly, use royalty-free software and adopt technologies and solutions that are inter-operatable or work with multiple vendors.
 
Sources in the Department of Information Technology (DIT) said the government had constituted six working groups, comprising members from the academia, industry and technology experts to work on the standards. They jointly submitted the policy document to the apex body for final approval.
 
This is the first time that the Indian government is mooting such a decision, and the policy on 'open standards' (as opposed to proprietary standards) for all e-governance initiatives in India should save the government millions of dollars since it will dispense with the need for royalties and licenses.
 
But what's the need for an 'open standard' ? "E-governance implementation may happen in stages. Hence, we can have multiple agencies working in different departments at different times. At some stage, though, all these applications need to integrated so that they can talk to each other. Unless the standards are open, this cannot happen," explained R Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary (E-Governance), Department of Information Technology. He, however, did not comment when specifically asked about the policy status.
 
The working groups, among other things, too had cited numerous examples in favour of an 'open standard'. It provides technology choices and avoids vendor lock-ins, they noted.
 
For instance, they pointed out that the operating system (OS) used to account for just 1 per cent of a PC's cost in 1993 but now accounts for about 50 per cent of the cost.
 
Around 7 million PCs are sold in India every year. It could result in huge savings if the software is royalty-free (i.e. open source, thus free) or available at a nominal cost. It could also help in providing low-cost PCs, and bridging the 'digital divide'.
 
Similarly other consumer goods with embedded software like DVD players, mobile phones, would also cost less. For instance, DVD manufacturers in China have to pay royalty charges for a video format standard they use. It is around 33 per cent of the retail price of the DVD player.
 
Hence, manufacturers could save $20 royalty on every DVD player of $60 if the video format was an 'open standard' one.
 
The working group also reasoned that the government can't afford to spend time and money fighting piracy issues (PC software piracy losses in 2006 for India amounted to around Rs 5,000 crore) with some vendors when education and healthcare top the list of must do(s) for the government.
 
Piracy issues, they suggested, could be better addressed by reducing software costs, and using open source software.
 
Meanwhile, India is already made a lot of progress with regard to 'open standard'. There are about 10 states which are fairly pro-active and have made significant progress in implementing e-governance projects.
 
For instance, the Department of IT, Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi, adopted the open document format (ODF) standard, and as a result has saved around 78 per cent in costs by eliminating the need to purchase proprietary office suites or licenses. This has encouraged other government departments to adopt open standards instead of proprietary softwares.
 
The high court of Allahabad is another case in point. It moved all its electronic documents to ODF because it felt that it was cost-effective and safe to store its documents in a format which is open and also to carry out any kind of information exchange through open standards. So is the case with the West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu governments.
 
Even the Election Commission decided to migrate to OpenOffice.org after the elections of May-June 2006.
 
In terms of license costs, the switch to ODF also means potential savings of 15,000 per license on each of the 2,000 licenses recurring for license upgrades which amounts to Rs 3 crore.
 
Having lined-up these arguments, the open standard proponents are awaiting the final government nod.
 
Characteristics of an open standard
 
  • Should be royalty-free in perpetuity
  • Should be developed in a collaborative manner; not led by a single agency or small clique of interested parties
  • Should not use unpublished extensions; not duplicate already existing standards
  • Should make the specification documents available freely or at a nominal charge
  • Should not violate domestic laws
  • Should be made available for the same capability, worldwide and no subset or super-set for different regions / countries
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    First Published: Oct 26 2007 | 12:00 AM IST

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