To, Shri R Chandrashekar,
Secretary (IT),
Department of Information Technology,
Ministry for Communications and IT,
Government of India.
Subject: FOSSCOMM's position on the “Draft Policy on Open Standards for e-Government”
Dear Sir,
FOSSCOMM, as a civil society alliance of organizations and individuals working to promote use of free and open source software (FOSS) in India, would like to place on record its appreciation for the Draft Open Standards Policy for e-Governance that has been created under the leadership of DIT, MCIT, Government of India. We believe this promises to be a landmark policy that will have far-reaching impact on e-governance in India.
We understand that NASSCOM and MAIT in their latest comments on the Draft Policy on Open Standards for e-Government have sought the inclusion of multiple standards and royalty encumbered standards in the draft policy. We believe that these two recommendations, if accepted, will render the policy meaningless and nullify the two years of painstaking efforts taken by the committee to draft this progressive policy.
As a part of its mandate, FOSSCOMM seeks to engage with software related policies of the governments as well as support programs that adopt FOSS. Members of FOSSCOMM include various kinds of social activists – from technologists interested in social areas to those primarily with a background in areas like knowledge, education and social development. FOSSCOMM has reviewed Version 2 of the policy that was tabled at the Second meeting of the Apex Body on Standards for eGovernance held on 17th June 2009 and strongly support its recommendations that standards be royalty-free in perpetuity and that for a single domain, only a single standard should be used. We therefore request you to ensure that Version 2 of the Draft Policy is approved at the earliest without any dilution on the above account. Our position on this issue is being provided in some detail along with this letter.
We also request that FOSSCOMM as a national civil society alliance be invited to be part of the Apex Committee that is drafting the policy. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that the Apex Committee does not have any representation from civil society but has multiple representatives from industry, on a issue that has very significant public interest implications. This goes against canons of participatory policy making followed by Indian Government and is also not in keeping with international commitments made by the Indian Government at various fora including at the World Summit on the Information Society.
Please let us know if you need any clarifications. Looking forward to your response.
With warm regards,
Prof Andrew Lynn, Professor Jawaharlal Nehru University
Mr Kishore Bhargava, India Linux Users' Group, Delhi
Mr Raj Mathur, India Linux Users' Group, Delhi
on behalf of FOSSCOMM, India