Tux Watch

Part- 4. India Plays “IT” Big

Further adding to local FOSS Ecosystem development initiatives in India, the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has been making headlines [here ] the world over as the state goes for FOSS due to concerns over security and the high costs that Microsoft offers for Windows. The Indian state is not new to FOSS as the local government been running Red Hat Linux on various backend servers coupled with JBoss application server and PostgreSQL databases.

Mr. C.Umashankar the Managing Director, Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Elcot is a state-owned IT supplier) has clearly announced that

the Government departments across the Tamil Nadu state will switch from Windows desktops to Novell’s Suse Linux and OpenOffice from this year. Umashankar believes that the first attraction of open source software is cost, it’s also very stable, and free of viruses and that the move will slash the local government’s IT cost by 15 to 25 percent.

The decision is further supported by the fact that recently, two Windows servers running in the state’s IT network were infected with viruses whereas this situation was unlikely to happen in a Linux environment The government has already sent 6,500 Linux systems to villages and another 6,100 are on their way with about 20,000 desktop computers running Suse Linux will also be procured for schools across the state.

The state is also in the process of deploying a financial application that has been procured for a new system supporting 10,000 cooperatives in Tamil Nadu. The migration is also being undertaken by Elcot’s Linux support center, with the help of Novell. In the next six months, more than 30,000 government officials will receive training on using Linux and the OpenOffice word processor. Meanwhile, Windows desktops will continue to be available for use, but officials will be encouraged to work on the Linux platform instead.

Sunil Abraham, manager of the International Open Source Network (IOSN) [here] at the United Nations believes that apart from cost and technical benefits, FOSS can enable governments in developing countries such as India, to quickly respond to changing requirements. Should a natural disaster like a tsunami occur, governments can quickly assemble a team of open source engineers to piece together software tools that can be used to manage a disaster situation.

However, the current lack of expertise for open source software in India could impede the technology’s adoption in the country. This problem exists all across India because more and more colleges and engineering institutions have started teaching proprietary technologies, rather than general computing concepts but this may change in future since from last year, Anna University together with India’s Center for Development of Advanced Computing in Chennai, have been offering two new modules in FOSS and introduced to 300 engineering students in Tamil Nadu.

As for Microsoft, its Indian office offered Elcot a discounted price for Windows XP, at 7,000 rupees (US$157) per copy but the deal fell through when Umashankar was only willing to pay 300 rupees (US$6.73) thus Microsoft did not agree. Over 300 e-governance applications in India are running on the Microsoft platform and it will be engaging with close to 14 state governments. Microsoft states that 80 percent of Tamil Nadu state government applications are running on Microsoft platform such as registration, land records, treasury, transport, to name a few.

The news about Tamil Nadu states decision to shift over to FOSS is pushing other state governments to reconsider their software procurement options as well as choose FOSS in telecenter environments. Tamil Nadu is also becoming one of the largest producer and consumer of FOSS skills in India.