Re: [GNOME-India] conference follow up..

[Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbheek chauhan gmail com>]

On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 3:24 AM, Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me> wrote:
> Thank you for the summary.  Excellent stuff!  I'm not surprised in regards
> to the environment and the uphill battle.  What you describe is relatively
> true for any Government I would imagine.

Yes, I wasn't surprised either, but I thought it would be good to
explain it for the benefit of people who haven't experienced this
first-hand.

> So to change culture is a very difficult thing, and would require that we
> build a reward system top and bottom.  Meaning, we could reward those quite
> publically when they use open source and free software and talk about the
> savings.  I think we can figure out something.

Interesting that you talk about a reward system, because I talked to
both Nayak and Savant about this in the context of the Aadhaar
project[1]. The Aadhaar project by UIDAI is a country-wide identity
system with a unique number, biometrics, address, and so on (a bit
like the Social Security system in the US) that is being pushed
heavily by the government; particularly in the last year or so. It
propagated itself by being funded by the money that it saved in each
department by reducing wastage and fraud[2]. We talked about how such
a system would likely work even better in propagating open source
within government projects.

However, the system would have to be formulated and managed very
carefully because openness in software cannot save you if your
software is mismanaged.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar
2. https://medium.com/@jackerhack/a-rant-on-aadhaar-6213e002f064

Cheers,
Nirbheek