‘#FOSS4GOV INNOVATION CHALLENGE’

• MeitY announces #FOSS4GOV Innovation Challenge to accelerate adoption of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Government.
•  India is well positioned to become a vibrant hub for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) innovations, due to the large number of 4G data subscribers in India, 96% of whom access the digital world via open-source based mobile operating systems (primarily Android).
• Some of India’s largest-government projects (including Aadhaar) and many technology start-ups have also been built using FOSS.
• Acknowledging the huge potential of FOSS, the Government of India had issued a Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software in 2015.

Important points:

• To increase awareness about the usage of FOSS in governance and government functioning, and adoption of FOSS, a virtual roundtable discussion ‘Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Government’ was organized by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) in collaboration with Omidyar Network India in April 2021.
• The Ministry also announced a #FOSS4GOV Innovation Challenge to accelerate adoption of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Government.

Challenge

• The #FOSS4GOVInnovation Challenge calls upon FOSS innovators, technology entrepreneurs and Indian Startups to submit implementable open
• source product innovations in CRM and ERP with possible applications for Govtech in Health, Education, Agriculture, Urban Governance, etc.
• This is a challenge for local developers to create open-source customer relationship management and enterprise resource management software worthy of use by Indian government agencies.
• Participants are eligible for incubation support, prize money, mentorship by domain experts, institutional support from eminent organizations for incubation of ideas and listing of solutions on GeM.

SOURCE: THE HINDU ,THE ECONOMIC TIMES ,MINT