The department of Information Technology, Government of India Recently comes out with a new draft policy on open standard for e- Governance for softwares. The Policy provides a structure for the selection of Standards in between systems developed by multiple agencies while providing organizations the flexibility to select different hardware and software for implementing cost-effective e-Governance solutions.
Aims of policy:-
Promote technology choice
Avoids vendor lock-in because its basic aim has to reliable long-term accessibility to public documents and information in Indian context.
According to Government of India e-Governance policy should adopt Single and Royalty-Free (RF) Open Standard (A standard which meets all mandatory characteristics.) progressively for a specific purpose with in a domain to meet the laid down objectives of the Policy.
Mandatory Characteristics of open standard should have been framed by Government of India which has to fulfill important given criteria:-
Specification document of the Identified Standard shall be available with or without a nominal fee. The patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard shall be available on a Royalty-Free basis for the life time of the Standard. If such Standards are not found feasible then in the wider public interest, Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (FRAND An abbreviation for Fair Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory , is a phrase that international standards groups use to describe terms to which a patent contributor to a standard must adhere. If a technology which is part of the standard is to be licensed for a fee, the terms must be (i) impartial, (ii) non-exorbitant, (iii) published, and (iv) the same for all implementers or Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (RAND An abbreviation for Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory , is a phrase that international standards groups use to describe terms to which a patent contributor to a standard must adhere) with no payment could be considered.
Identified Standard shall be adopted and maintained by a not-for-profit organization, wherein all stakeholders can opt to participate in a transparent, collaborative and consensual manner.
Identified Standard shall be recursively open.
Identified Standard shall have technology-neutral specification. Identified Standard shall be capable of localization support, where applicable, for all Indian official Languages for all applicable domains.
GoI shall endeavour to adopt Single and Royalty-Free (RF) Open Standard for an Area. However, in view of the sufficient technical justification and in the wider public interest, additional standard(s) in the same domain may be considered by GoI based on the recommendations of the Designated Body. Such standard shall be compatible and bi-directionally interoperable with the already existing selected Standard.
It intends to guide the billion-dollar e-governance purchases and tenders, across government departments, for software and hardware over the next few years. The government has already allocated about $6 billion for various projects under the national e-governance plan.
Free Software Foundation of India, which advocates that software should be free and open for all. The draft is also not clear on whether it will also impact existing e-governance projects or only new tenders. The draft policy, in its preamble, recommends that standards that are ‘mature and have a large proliferation’ will be consider, all patent claims necessary to implement the standard should be royalty-free. Also, royalty-free on FRAND/RAND is self-contradictory.
