1. Economic Impact of Open Standard Software: An Indian Perspective Prof. Rajanish Dass IIM, Ahmedabad rajanish@iimahd.ernet.in

2. Impacts  Better options  Cutting out ‘vendor lock-in’  Greater choice among vendor selection  Promise for supporting innovation  Low cost of switching

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. Cost Implications  78% of the total software purchase was for buying licensed Office suites

9. 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

10. 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

11. Savings for HMIS for Hospitals Type of Hospital No. of Nodes Extra Financial Implication for Windows XP @Rs.3500 per node No. of Hospitals Total Amount Saved (INR) A200700,00032100000 B30010500002021000000 C4001400000811200000 TOTAL SAVINGS 34300000 (34.3 million)

12. Savings from Licensing Fees

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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 up…having an open mind and an open view

18. Thanks!