Economic Impact of Open Standard Software: An Indian Perspective

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Economic Impact of Open Standard Software An
Indian Perspective

• Prof. Rajanish Dass
• IIM, Ahmedabad
• rajanish_at_iimahd.ernet.in

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Impacts

• Better options
• Cutting out vendor lock-in
• Greater choice among vendor selection
• Promise for supporting innovation
• Low cost of switching

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Economic Advantage

• In case of perfect competition, market determines
  the price
• Local innovations can be supported at low cost
• Better sustaining capability due to presence of
  many players

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Economic Advantage

• Competition will also determine that enhanced
  products reaches customer in right time and not
  the other way round
• One bold step towards citizen centric policies
• Boon for nurturing ICT enabled economy

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Global Scenario

• Governments across the globe are giving serious
  considerations
• Number of nations across the globe are planning
  for adapting to ODF
• A number of other governments have started
  providing active support to usage by encouraging
  end-users

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Tangible Economic Benefits India

• Adoption of ODF Open Office by Govt. of NCT
  Delhi
• Adoption of ODF Open Office by the Election
  Commission of India

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Gov. of NCT Delhi

• Usage of IT across departments was going up
• In 2004 total IT related procurement against 52
  orders was Rs. 73.5 Lakhs
• In 2005 total IT related procurement against 117
  orders was Rs. 352 Lakhs
• Approx 379 increase in IT procurement

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Cost Implications

• 78 of the total software purchase was for buying
  licensed Office suites

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Circular by IT Secretary

• On 30-Nov-05 Secretary (IT), Delhi issued a
  circular to encourage use of OpenOffice
• Prohibited purchase of licensed Office suite
  across all departments, even on demand
• Acted as the enabler for managing this change by
  asking clarifications to be directed to DoIT
• Main reason for taking this decision was
  cost-cutting

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Other Initiatives

• State Judiciary systems are based on Open
  Standards up to district level courts
• HMIS for 31 hospitals to use Open Standards
• Super speciality hospital Institute of Liver and
  Biliary Services (with a budget of Rs. 3.5
  billion) will use Open Standards

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Savings for HMIS for Hospitals
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Savings from Licensing Fees
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Total Savings

• Total Savings
• Savings from using Linux Rs. 3.5 Cr
• Savings from Licensing fees Rs. 24 Cr
• Total Savings Rs 28 Cr (Approx)
• Add to this the cost of a lower downtime
  freedom from vendor lock-in and enabling
  migration future upgrades

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Election Commission of India

• Spread across the national geography of India
• Has adopted Open Source and Open Office
• Has also opened up its in-house databases and
  software developed
• Train the trainer approach in August 2006
  followed by a circular
• Distributed across India 4120 CDs containing ODF,
  Open Source Software and Freewares

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Election Commission of India

• Number of Computers to be impacted when Open
  software gets accepted in all nodes of EC at
  least 10,000 12,000
• Ballpark Savings (in tune with previous slide of
  NCT Delhi) Rs. 280 336 Cr.
• But both of the departments are facing challenges
  in execution of these decisions

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Challenges

• Lack of trained manpower
• Lack of support for training
• Cost of Training and Support
• Less awareness among end-users
• Inertia to change
• Bottlenecks in ensuring and monitoring change

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Road Ahead

• Promoters must remove the elitist tag from Open
  Source and ODF
• Walk an extra mile for non-technical end-users
• Create User groups and enable them to spread the
  light
• And its all about opening uphaving an open
  mind and an open view

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Thanks!