Analysis of FOSS Government Policies in India

Abstract

India has formulated several FOSS policies that focus on government adoption and development. Many of them lack enforceability or face implementation challenges that often depend on the specific public official implementing software projects. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of existing government efforts for FOSS adoption to examine design faults that reveal inconsistent use.

The first part of this paper examines the policies made by the State of Kerala and then matches them against the implementation. This is done through a study of frameworks based on FOSS adoption within government, the efforts particularly in FOSS based education and the activities of the International Center for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS). The second part of this paper then examines the policies of the Union Government of India, through a study of the policies that have been under the Digital India programme. Even here, the lack of institutionalisation is evident from the lack of proper implementation and the sporadic FOSS based developments do not achieve their full potential.

This paper aims to document, analyse and propose a more ambitious agenda for FOSS policies by governments to secure and fulfill the mandates of existing policies and even to look ahead towards the formulation of next generation frameworks.

Keywords: Free and Open Source Software, India, FOSS India Policies, Digital India Open Source

JEL Classification: O35, O38