On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 8:28 PM, Krishnakant Mane <[email protected]> wrote:
> ** > Just one quick comment. > Just raising the compatibility issues and pointing it out to the > government will not help. > The main question the microsoft "tota's " will repeat is, "who will use > this aftterall? every one uses excel ". > So it is also important to convince them that a large number of people > don't use microsoft office. > And today it is not completely false difficult to do. > The quesetion is if the work is worth while. > Happy hacking. > Krishnakant. > > On 27/07/11 15:37, Vickram Crishna wrote: > > On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 2:44 PM, Nagarjuna G <[email protected]>wrote: > >> On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Terence Monteiro <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 6:33 PM, Debayan Banerjee <[email protected]> >> > wrote: >> >> >> >> 2011/5/25 Guru गुरु <[email protected]> >> >>> >> >>> Friends >> >>> we have tried to mail/contact the Income Tax dept to request that they >> >>> should not have only MS Excel upload format for the Income tax >> returns, but >> >>> there is no response... >> >>> any ideas / constructive suggestions on what we could do.. >> >>> regards >> >> >> >> http://freedom-matters.in/ -> By Terence Monteiro from DeepRoot >> Linux. He >> >> is the first name on this page http://fosscomm.in/HallOfFame :) >> > >> > Kindly note that the ITR1 form for filing income tax returns is >> successfully >> > migrated to LibreOffice / OpenOffice for this year (Assessment year >> > 2011-2012) and available on the same site, http://freedom-matters.in . >> > Kindly spread the word. Also, I just successfully filed my own returns >> using >> > the migrated spreadsheet using LibreOffice 3.3.2 :-). >> > The goal of this endeavour is that no person who wants to file ITR and >> does >> > not have MS Excel should suffer because of this partiality by the >> > Government. But we are still a long way from this. The problem is, every >> > year the form changes, since tax rules change, so this migration is >> going to >> > be difficult in future. We need to get the Government / IT Department to >> > stop favouring MS Excel. They are only making it harder for non-MS >> Office >> > users. Kindly lets continue this discussion and effort to put pressure >> on >> > the concerned people to make a change in this department. >> > -- >> > Regards, >> > Terence Monteiro. >> > >> >> Can you prepare a note on the compatibility issues, and the problems >> faced while porting into libreOffice. If you agree FSF India will use >> your notes and submit a representation with the IT department. >> >> > +1 > > I have been following these threads (on IT filings) and felt somewhere we > were missing out on a constructive approach to apprise the I-T deptt of > inappropriate design of these forms. > > I understand a similar situation exists with Sales Tax, which I have seen > people struggling with, because ST also is nowadays online, and is > intertwined with Excel (impossible to submit without having Excel process > the form). > > I can't comment on how well the I-T form works this year, but a year or > two back, I found that without having a very reliable connection, it was > exceedingly risky to click on the links. An interrupted process was > disastrous. Of course, this is not a FOSS issue as such, but compounds > problems if one must also rely on an offline client application working > properly. > > -- > Vickram > > As Vickram and Krishnakant have pointed out, I believe this is more than just a technical problem. This is really a multifaceted issue in the long term, and I think we should handle this as such. Our Government may have an official policy on open document standards, but it seems to lack either the knowledge or the will to bring the benefits of this policy to people. I think we need to send them a detailed report which: 1. Asserts the importance of providing support for LibreOffice/OpenOffice: talks about licencing issues of MS Office, the availability of OpenOffice/LibreOffice for all platforms. I'm sure there are more than a few misconceptions about OpenOffice/LibreOffice that we need to tackle. 2. Convinces them that a switch to OO/LO is purely in the public interest, and not of any other parties, and is the best for the people, reaching a wider audience (including Windows users). 3. Shows them the difficulty in migrating from MS Excel on a sustained basis. 4. Shows them the feasibility of developing/maintaining an OO/LO based solution. I will send a detailed report on this, especially the 3rd point soon. An alternative, radical solution for ITR and Sales Tax would be to have everything online - use a online application with Javascript and server side scripting (e.g PHP) to do the work of validation and computation. However, this seems too much of a switch, requiring a different skill set from the MS Excel solutions. Also, it may be more burdensome on the server - probably we all know of government sites going down due to overload. So an Open document solution seems the path of least resistance technically speaking. Meanwhile, do continue the ideas/suggestions. -- Terence.
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