Hello all, Greetings from IT for Change!
ITfC (IT for Change) is a non-profit organisation located in India. ITfC envisions a society capable of, and comfortable with, innovative and effective use of information and communication technologies (ICT) as a tool, to further goals of social change.We undertake research, advocacy and field-action projects in the area of ICTs for development. Wanted to share information on a new on FLOSS, which is being coordinated by the European Union. This project will look at increasing FLOSS uptake in various countries, including India. This project called FLOSS Include, will be carried out by a project team of research institutes, government agencies, private companies and non-governmental organizations in 9 countries - Argentina, Cambodia, China, Ghana, India, South Africa, Spain and the UK. The consortium is led by UNU-MERIT, a joint research and training centre of United Nations University and Maastricht University in the Netherlands and includes among other organizations, Canonical Ltd the sponsors for Ubuntu. In India, the FLOSS Include project will carry out an in-depth analysis of the technical, business and socio-political needs for the growth of FLOSS use, deployment and development in the target regions. In the larger effort, partners will implement FLOSS solutions, tools and services to ensure they are cost-effective and practical for each environment. The FLOSS Include aims to ensure a lasting impact beyond the project duration. A project fact sheet is available at http://flossinclude.eu ITforChange (http://www.itforchange.net/) and Sarai, India (http://www.sarai.net/) are the two organizations in India, which will be a part of this project. As part of FLOSS Include, ITfC will focus on FLOSS and the public sector and will study the role of public sector agencies in producing, organizing and stimulating production of FLOSS, including using FLOSS for public administration, and sharing of FLOSS applications among public sector bodies. Much of social processes, like public delivery of health, education and livelihood support services have a central role for public authorities and hence public systems have a crucial role in pushing FLOSS. Currently commercial, proprietary software is often preferred and the project would study the contexts for FLOSS being used in a larger way for Public administration. We will also study government polices for FLOSS an area where which tends to often have a pro-industry / commercial software orientation and not much support or enthusiasm for FLOSS. In addition, since the issues of standards have a strong connection to the role of public sector - both as a major bulk user of software and being able to set default standards through using them in public application , and through direct policy interventions the study will have a strong focus on the interoperability and open standards aspects in our research. The project activities have been kick-started now and the project is currently in progress. Thanks, Vinay Sreenivasa IT for Change 91-(0)821-2343527 91-98805-95032 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ITforChange.net _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- [email protected] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Next Event: http://freed.in - February 22-24, 2008 Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
