WELCOME TO OPEN SOURCE SUMMIT 2018...

The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology has already said that open source adoption was necessary to support the government's goal to transform India into a "digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy". It has added that the country had always advocated the use of open standards and open source technologies in the public sector. The Indian government spends significant amount of money per year on software licences and maintenance. Government of India is adopting Open Source platform as a key which is helping open source vendors to flourish as CIOs of various organizations are welcoming the platform warm heartedly.

Governments also have started to disseminate increasingly more information and offer more services online these days, they also need to connect new websites and applications to older ones, as well as across departments. To avoid having to rewrite old software code to function with new apps, governments are encouraging developers to use software with built-in open standards. The primary goal of employing open source in government is also to facilitate the transfer of data as smoothly as possible. Open-standards proponents say this approach would lead to more innovation within government and better citizen services. Is this as easy as it sounds and is it happening?

Given the scale of that spending, it's understandable that India, like other administrations around the world, has considered open source software and open software standards as a way of saving money.

But more than just seeing the move to open source as a cost-effective alternative, Is it also a means of speeding up innovation in the public sector?