Thursday, July 16, 2009

A (non) conversation with NASSCOM

I wrote to NASSCOM asking for a copy of their submission to DIT on Open Standards. This is their reply and my reply to them. For the record, my reply asking for details was sent yesterday around 4PM. No reply yet on how they submitted an "industry view" without consulting some of us forgotten souls in the industry.

Dear Mr. Hariharan,

Thank you for your email sent to Mr. Som Mittal. NASSCOM has yet to
submit its recommendations to the revised National e-Gov Standards
Policy and we will send them our recommendations once we submit it to
DIT.

Regards,


Dear XYZ,

Thanks for the prompt reply. According to the minutes of the second
meeting of the Apex Committee [1], "Mr. Rajdeep of NASSCOM re-iterated
that government should allow multiple standards at any instance."

The minutes adds that, "Secretary DIT and DG (NIC) suggested that
NASSCOM and MAIT should have an industry consultation on the revised
draft Policy and come out with a collective view ensuring that the
objectives of open standards are fully met and achievable. Both the
members i.e. NASSCOM & MAIT have agreed to do so and suggested to come
back to DIT with the industry view by 7-8th July 09."

Based on the above, I have a couple of questions:

1) Will Red Hat's views be taken into consideration when submitting
inputs to the Apex Committee?

2) What was the process that was followed when Mr. Rajdeep submitted the
NASSCOM's views recorded in the minutes of the second meeting of the
Apex Committee?

As a member, we are seriously interested in the above questions since
open standards is a critical issue for the future of e-Governance and
the IT industry.

We look forward to hearing from you at the earliest.