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.
Showing posts with label OGG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OGG. Show all posts
Monday, January 03, 2011
Friday, September 19, 2008
India's Draft Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance released
India's Department of IT has released the Draft Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance. For the open source community, this is a significant
step forward because this policy can eliminate the barriers that we have faced due to proprietary standards like .doc, .mpg and others.
Once this policy is finalized, it will become a part of all future Requests for Proposals (RFPs). A committee has been constituted to review standards on the basis of the mandatory charecteristics required by this policy. The committee's report shows that according to this policy, ODF, OGG, W3C standards etc are some of the standards that meet all the mandatory criteria for open standards. OOXML, MPEG etc *do not* meet these mandatory criteria.
The most controversial aspect of this policy was whether multiple standards should be allowed for the same purpose. We have been vocal in arguing vendors should collaborate on standards and compete on their implementation because this is the best outcome for industry and consumers and the Draft Policy has accepted this point.
step forward because this policy can eliminate the barriers that we have faced due to proprietary standards like .doc, .mpg and others.
Once this policy is finalized, it will become a part of all future Requests for Proposals (RFPs). A committee has been constituted to review standards on the basis of the mandatory charecteristics required by this policy. The committee's report shows that according to this policy, ODF, OGG, W3C standards etc are some of the standards that meet all the mandatory criteria for open standards. OOXML, MPEG etc *do not* meet these mandatory criteria.
The most controversial aspect of this policy was whether multiple standards should be allowed for the same purpose. We have been vocal in arguing vendors should collaborate on standards and compete on their implementation because this is the best outcome for industry and consumers and the Draft Policy has accepted this point.
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