In order to ensure transparency and efficiency, the government has mandated the use of open source software (OSS) in all e-governance systems implemented by various government organisations. In an interaction, Amarjeet Manchanda tells Shubhendu Parth how Red Hat India is propogating the adoption of OSS among various government agencies to deliver citizen-centric services. Excerpts.
Q: India is planning to launch open source operating system – Bharat Operating System Solutions or BOSS. What role is Red Hat playing in this?
Red Hat has been working very closely with various government agencies in India to propagate the adoption of open source software (OSS) for citizen-centric services and e-governance initiatives. This strong collaboration resulted in successful adoption of OSS and Red Hat technologies in government projects like UIDAI, CRIS, land records and MyGov. The engineering level collaboration between Red Hat, NIC and CDAC has also helped in overcoming the language barrier for IT adoption by introducing 20+ Indian local language support across OS and LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Python/Perl) Stack. We will continue to collaborate with the agencies for adoption of newer OSS innovations.