eGov – Open Standards,

Open SourceOpen Data/Content

K S RAJAN

LAB FOR SPATIAL INFORMATICS, IIIT HYDERABAD

31st Jan 2015

What is eGovernance? Is it about delivery of government services?◦Like Birth certificates, land ownership

Is it about digitization of the government records for better book-keeping?◦Like accounting the vehicle tax, property tax collected and follow up

Is it about improving Governance related Processes?◦Improved information flow regarding Govt. Policies and procedures◦Like subsidies and its beneficiaries

◦Data Exchange between departments and agencies

Triple-bottom line for Government Accountability value for the Community value for the Environment value for Money

These translate to Project Selection Criteria-◦ Fit for purpose◦ Value for Money◦ Low risk

Source: http://www.lisasoft.com/content/how-sell-open-source-government

Transparency in Governance ?• Data• Quality, Authenticity

• Process Management• Changes in Data, its Updates• Stakeholders can trace these changes effectively and

efficiently• Flow of Information• Data Information Decision Making (Knowledge Base)

• Standards• For data creation, storage and access

Systems to ensure Transparency

Open Standards

Open Tools

Open Data

Open Access

Governments and Documentation/Records What is important?

◦Storage◦Exchange of Data/Records

If storage, how long are these Records stored?◦Few years◦For posterity (like land ownership, etc)

If data exchange data infrastructure, then ?◦Interoperability of systems◦Interoperability of content (data format)

Interoperability and IT StandardsW3C

- HTTP, HTML, XML, SVG,…

ISO

- SQL, ISO 27001

Standards-based interfaces

- ODBC, JDBC, OLEDB/ADO

Enterprise architecture standards

- J2EE, .Net

Are Standards important in Governance? What are Standards?

- Specifications that define and describe formats, interfaces, protocols, etc

Do standards help in Governance?

- encourages more competition through multiple implementations

Why should standards be Open?

What value does Open Standards Add?

Open Standards Can be for Software or Hardware

◦Standard-setting organizations are industry groups that set common standards for a particular industry in order to ensure compatibility and interoperability of devices manufactured by different companies

Open standards refer to the freedom to encode and decode data and network protocols

Licensing/Patent terms RAND - Reasonable and non-discriminatory terms FRAND - (also known as) fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms RAND-RF – Royalty free licensing

Open Standards For Documents- ODF (Open Document Format)

◦ODF is an ISO standard 26300◦Developed in a truly participative manner over 4years

OOXML or Open XML◦A Microsoft designed standard◦Also accepted as ISO 29500◦But, doubts on its licensing are there - "Microsoft offers a gratis patent license for OOXML on terms which do not allow free implementations."[Richard Stallman, FSF]

Source: http://egov.eletsonline.com/2006/10/open-standards-based-e-governance/

National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance in India Adopted in Nov 2010

The Indian policy also states that a single open standard will be used for e-governance

Clause 4.1.2 The Patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard shall be made available on a Royalty-Free basis for the life time of the Standard.

See https://egovstandards.gov.in/

India – Standards for Generic Data Elements Common Across All Domains

◦ Date, Measurement, Financial Year, Calendar Year, Amount, Language Code, tel No., Email ID

Specific to Person Identification◦ Name, relationships, Face Image Data Record, etc

Specific to Land Region Codification◦ State, District, Village, Town, etc

There are both XML Schemas and Code Directories that are Published

Open Standards Creates Fertile Ground for open source◦POSIX -> Linux, OpenBSD, …

◦HTTP -> Apache

◦C, C++ -> Gnu C, C++ compiler

◦SQL, ODBC -> MySQL, PostGreSQL,…

◦POP, SMTP -> Sendmail

◦.NET -> Mono

Free and Open Source The Four Freedoms◦To Run, Study, Modify, Copy & Redistribute

Open Source, Vendor Neutrality 1. licence costs are free, so a stable old application can keep on

working in the background without any licence fees required.

2. governments can change their support company without changing their software. And this keeps the support companies honest.

3. if my support company goes out of business, there is no licence restrictions to stop me going and hiring another company.

4. your Open Source application is probably standards compliant, so you should be able to replace it with another standards compliant product.

Source: Cameron’s talk http://www.lisasoft.com/content/how-sell-open-source-government

Source: Geoff Zeiss Presentation at MWF-OSGeo Workshop, Director of Technology, Autodesk, Inc.

Open Source Reduces TCO

Advances in Technology and Community Engagement Web 2.0

◦defines such things as crowd sourcing information from your users in order to significantly reduce the cost of collecting and maintaining data.

Gov 2.0◦Australian government has actually been absorbing this into government thinking

◦Focus on taking the collaborative and participatory practices into government in order to make governments more effective at engaging the community.

INDIA – Open data intiativehttp://data.gov.in/

Open Data/Content http://data.gov.in/

Infrastructure Solutions Division

Free Geospatial Data US - Spatial data collected by Federal Government is freely available, E.g. TIGER.

South Africa - National Government digital spatial data is freely available.

Japan - Available from Geographical Survey Institute at nominal cost. High quality data maintained by the National Government. GSI budget is Y3B ($26M)/annum.

Google, Microsoft, MapQuest, Yahoo - Variety of licenses

EU - Amendment proposed to the INSPIRE directive to require free data.

Other APAC countries◦Restrictive government-controlled access to spatial data.◦A widely used alternative is Google.◦Firms and individuals are collecting themselves. Ex. Malsingmaps.com

Free access to data Enables transparency to Government processes

Allows a large number of value-added products to be generated◦Economic advantage

Governments, Companies and the Common People Benefit from the information generated

Infrastructure Solutions Division

Benefits of Free Data EU Study in 2000

◦US Government spends twice as much on data collection as the EU countries

◦The economic value generated by businesses using it was more than ten times greater – €750 billion.

This study was done by the EU itself.

Infrastructure Solutions Division

Free Data Creates Business Opportunities Free data provides the basis for a spatial IT ecosystem

Prerequisites: ◦Internet access ◦Open source ◦Low cost data

Low cost of entry◦Low financial barrier for entrepreneurs

Infrastructure Solutions Division

An example of Maps being created/consumed? Interoperability requires open standards.

◦ Open standards create a fertile ground for commoditization.

Open source is good at commodity software.◦http, html -> Apache HTTP Server◦OGC OWS -> MapServer

Web mapping is becoming commoditized◦MapServer used by ~50% of the world’s map servers

Open source, open data creates opportunities◦Foundation for a domestic spatial IT ecosystem

Some Useful siteshttps://egovstandards.gov.in/

https://www.itgovernance.co.uk/

http://www.bis.org.in/index.asp

http://www.iso.org/iso/standards