On Thursday 26 May 2011, Vickram Crishna wrote: > Is it possible to file a suit against the government, citing cases > like this? imho, the prayer ought to be that the government take > steps to ensure its citizen-facing actions, such as tax filings, or > applications for public positions, be open to all without fear or > favour. To put teeth into that 'ought', the court needs to levy a > penalty on the offending departments, the implication being that > departments that wilfully do so in the future will be liable to > greater penalties. The penalties can be paid into a fund, from which > petitioners who have suffered identifiable cash losses (including > penalties for non-compliance with tax directives etc) can be > compensated, plus payments can be made to third party vendors who > can work with the designated government departments (NIC, for > instance) to bring all government departments up to speed.
Agreed with most of what you say. However, we must distinguish between two different levels of conformance with open standards, protocols and file formats: 1. Services for which there is no alternative. For instance, if it's mandatory to file IT returns using a proprietary format/package, then the case for opening up that process is critical and cannot be compromised on. 2. Services that are provided as "helpers" or "conveniences" to the customer. For those, the concerned department can (somewhat legitimately) claim that the service is accessible to everyone from the primary medium (mail, or going to the office, or whatever) and the online service is only meant as a time-saver. Our case is much stronger in the first instance -- for services that mandate proprietary products, protocols and/or formats -- and I believe those are the ones that need to be attacked first. Denying a public service to a citizen of India is much more harmful than denying her the option of using a convenience for a service that is available in other forms. Regards, -- Raj -- Raj Mathur [email protected] http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
