Government of India has announced an interesting policy update. In its endeavor to transform India into a Digital empowered nation, government has taken a major step towards promoting the use of Open Source Software to ensure cost affordability. The policy will push Open Source Software acceptance & implementation in government setups.

The move is unequivocally a smart one. It will significantly lower the cost of ownership of these large-scale e-Governance projects. Making it a mandatory compliance for all the Government Organizations under Central government is definitely a strong indication of clear vision. This policy update is also applicable to state governments that opt for e-Governance applications & solutions or are updating the legacy or existing systems.

In this policy update release, government has clearly laid out the objective behind this decision, compliance norms and applicability in a very clear fashion. The policy mentions that government organizations need to specifically mention Open Source Software in RFPs while executing e-Gov projects.

The implementation mechanism section in the policy update elucidates government organizations need to compare Open Source Software exhaustively with Closed Source Software and a clear justification needs to be documented in case Closed Source Software is preferred over the other one.