ODF, OGG listed as standards approved for e-governance in India

Here is some good news to kick off the new year. As a follow-up to the Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance, the Department of Information Technology has published the "Interoperability Framework for E-Governance in India (IFEG)."

The draft of the IFEG lists out the standards approved for e-governance in India. The last date for comments on this draft is 27th Jan 2011. The IFEG draft clearly says that ODF and OGG are standards approved for e-governance in India and proprietary document formats and multimedia formats are not mentioned at all. My understanding is that these standards will be included in the future Requests for Proposals (RFP) for e-Governance applications, which means that these standards will be baked-in to all future e-Governance applications.