Open Sesame

What happens in open standards?
All technology/software used for e-governance becomes inter-operable. In other words, any technology platform or software should be able to read government documents, maps, images and datasheets.

Who gains?

• Government: Will not have to spend crores on a proprietary standard. Various offices would be able to access data without having same technology/software.
• Consumers: Will not have to buy proprietary software to access government documents

Who loses?
Big proprietary software companies and licensed technology platforms

E-governance market in India

• Size: $10 billion
• Proprietary tech/software 95%
• Open Source 5%

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The policy has been cleared by the Department of Information Technology and the National Informatics Centre and is likely to be made official soon. This effectively means the technology used in all government departments and offices would have to shift to an open standard. With rough estimates putting the e-governance market at around $10 billion, the new system—at the interface and data-archival levels—will shake up big companies hitherto operating in these segments through their proprietary (read paid-for) standards.

At present, government offices and projects across the country use different standards for managing documents, maps, images, spreadsheets and databases. A majority of these are on proprietary platforms and do not necessarily inter-operate, so documents and data of one state cannot be read or accessed by another. In the absence of a common thread, every time the Centre asks for data or information from states, it has to be converted into a common format, which takes time and runs the risk of data loss. “Proprietary standards have always come in the way of e-governance. You have to ensure that what the government does is not limited by such standards,” says Mishi Chaudhary of the Software Freedom Law Centre, a legal interest group for open standards.

Looking at the sheer size of the government’s e-governance programme, its choice would become the default standard for everyone. “The implications could be far-reaching as open standards would finally determine the technology infrastructure of the entire country,” says Parminder Jeet Singh, director, IT for Change, a Bangalore-based NGO. Also, with the UID (Aadhar) project seeking to create a master database of citizens, only an open standard can ensure its inter-operability across sectors.

The battle between open and proprietary standards has been going on for several years. In fact, the government was working towards bringing in an open standards environment as early as July ’08, but that could not happen because of pressures from proprietary vendors. After discussions with stakeholders, the government did come out with a comprehensive policy draft last year. However, say sources, thanks to the proprietary vendors, the policy was diluted to accommodate clauses that favoured them.

This led to large-scale protests and 14 organisations, including research organisations, NGOs, legal firms and open standards evangelists, made a joint representation before the government against the dilution. The present form of the policy follows the May 2010 draft that corrects some of those anomalies. It obviously remains a sensitive topic as industry body NASSCOM chose not to speak to Outlook for this story. Officials of leading proprietary vendor Microsoft did speak, but on condition of anonymity. The company argues that standards by themselves will not give inter-operability. “If inter-operability is what the government is looking at, in its present form, the policy will achieve very little,” says a company official.

But Venkatesh Hariharan, corporate affairs director, Red Hat, a leading vendor of open source software, says, “Without such a policy, e-government would be a mess of incompatible systems. We are still using land records and maps that date back 400 years. If we store this e-government data in closed proprietary formats, we risk losing this data forever. If we use open, royalty-free standards like those defined by the World Wide Web Consortium, we can ensure the long-term preservation of government data,” says he.

Different people’s groups, especially at the states, have also awaited the open standard eagerly as many of their systems fail to meet the existing standards prescribed by various state governments. Some of these groups, especially those focused on the differently abled and local languages, have been fighting for standard neutrality at the government level. They want to access government information on software platforms customised for them but not following standards designed by proprietary firms.

There are, however, concerns that the policy will leave enough room to accommodate the interests of large proprietary firms. The policy states that in case royalty-free open standards were not found feasible in the wider public interest—and to respect intellectual property—it could consider exceptions. Various people’s groups feel this leaves room for interpretation. “The battle is still not won. We wanted a clear open standards policy but there are provisions in the policy by which royalties can come in,” says Prabir Purakayastha, chairman, Knowledge Commons, an organisation that looks at software and patents.

The other issue causing heartburn is the provision allowing existence of multiple standards. Many think this defeats the purpose of one uniform standard. Microsoft obviously thinks otherwise. Says the official: “A single standard will not work in many applications. If the government is looking for a single standard, it will kill flexibility in the systems.” The government obviously agrees as it has kept space for multiple standards. Says Shankar Aggarwal, joint secretary in charge of e-governance initiatives: “Many times a single standard is not possible and society is not mature enough to accept one standard. As long as the purpose of inter-operability is achieved without loss of data, it should be good enough.”

Openness also brings about concerns over security of databases and crucial government information which proprietary software tended to protect. But the government is not thinking about that as of now. Says Aggarwal: “In an environment of open standards where information is accessible across platforms, there would be concerns. The security mechanism needs to be addressed and defined.”

But it’s evident that the biggest losers in this game would be proprietary standards companies like Microsoft who have billions of dollars at stake. Once the open standard comes into force, they will be forced to modify their technologies to read documents or data from just about any system and software. This doesn’t happen at present. With the debate on open standards more or less settled, now expect protracted lobbying over issues and terms of reference. But the good news is that finally an open path has been chosen.