US CTO Announced
Aneesh Chopra is the first US Federal Chief Technology Officer. He’s 37 years old, a Harvard graduate, a successful CTO at the state level, and an American of Indian origin. A crescendo of praise for this new star is rising. But it is also raising up every technology leader’s wish-list for fresh consideration by the top US technology policy and implementation machinery. From big bloggers like Tim O’Reilly to Intel’s Craig Barrett to VC Vinod Khosla, everyone has admiration… and expectations.
Mr. Chopra is reported to understand the power of today’s new trends in the technology ecosystem - collaboration, open content and the Internet. He’s in a position to make wise choices among competing IT agendas, where both action and vision matter. Let’s hope he applies the best information technologies to the real problems he’s mandated to solve. For the benefit of all of us.
Posted in Collaboration, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, OpenGovernment, OpenSource, OpenStandards.
Tagged with Collaboration, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, OpenGovernment, OpenSource, OpenStandards.
A Portrayal of Life
Satyajit Ray’s portrayal of life in 20th century India has captivated many Indians like myself who live abroad. Reading an article with a slideshow in the New York Times today reminded me of my admiration for Ray’s stories, scripts and characters. From “Pather Panchali” to “Shatranj Ke Khilari”, his films emphasize a refreshing realism.
Ray’s work is on display in “First Light: Satyajit Ray From the Apu Trilogy to the Calcutta Trilogy” at the Film Society of New York’s Lincoln Center this month from April 15-30.
Posted in Culture, India.
Tagged with Culture, India.
India Election Mashups
India engages in the important ritual of democracy - an Indian general election — every five years. This ritual will be held from April 16 through May 13, 2009 when all 543 seats of the lower house of the Indian Parliament known as the Lok Sabha are up for grabs.
714 million voters, 828,804 polling stations and boatloads of money spent to engage in this process.
The Indian subsidiaries of two of the largest global web companies - Google India and Yahoo India have launched two mashups in Web 2.0 style. Both sites do a good job of educating the English speaking voters of India on the latest in election news, analysis, voting myths, election abbreviations and symbols, and polling schedules. The sites have some interactive features such as maps, polls to understand the citizens’ priorities on issues such as infrastructure, power, water, jobs, economy and national security. The sites personalize data based on the voter’s location and permit searching voter rolls to find your polling booth.
These mashups could be even more helpful if they were provided in local languages. The non-English speaking majority of voters in India would benefit by access to modern and unbiased election information services. Hopefully next time an Indian startup will see the opportunity to help inform and build a nation!
Check out the Yahoo! mashup here and the Google mashup here.
Posted in India, Mashup, OpenData, OpenGovernment, OpenSource, Web 2.0.
Tagged with India, Mashup, OpenData, OpenGovernment, OpenSource, Web2.0.
Open Source in India
Open source software has made it to the information technology plans of the political machinery in India. With national elections just around the corner in April and May, everyone in India’s multi-party system is looking for alliances, marriages, deals — any arrangement — to ensure their next win. And everyone is customizing their PR machinery to appeal to the millions of voters in both rural and urban areas - trying to fit the shoe to the appropriate foot.
On March 14th, one of India’s major opposition groups - the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced an Information Technology Vision that mentions open source software in two contexts - one of open standards and the other of open source in education. The plan urges the “Government of India to standardize on ‘open standard’ and ‘open source’ software.” It also suggests that “an IT standards-setting body would be spun out of BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards).” The plan further promotes using open source software to expand eEducation, to enable building a Rs.10,000 laptop and to spread innovation in the nation’s academic community.
Noble ideas that would represent giant steps for open source software adoption in India!
In close succession to the BJP’s announcement, another power bloc led by the Communist Party of India - CPI (Marxist) announced their manifesto on March 16th. This proposal for reform in science and technology includes some loaded statements listed below which seem to reinforce a collective model for using open source software and banning software patents.
“…promoting free software and other such new technologies, which are free from monopoly ownership through copyrights or patents;
… the promotion of a “knowledge commons” across disciplines, like biotechnology and drug discovery…..
… scrapping the public funded R&D Bill, that seeks to allow patenting of products that are developed through public funded laboratories…
… revamping the functioning of the Patent offices to ensure strict adherence to the Indian Patent Act;
… stop training and orientation of Indian Patent office personnel by the US and European Patent offices.”
The ruling coalition led by the Congress Party, in its manifesto released on March 24th, talks about using IT to expand educational institutions, to improve connectivity infrastructure and to provide citizen IDs. It does not yet address the opportunities offered to India by open source software but perhaps a little more encouragement could do the trick.
Credit must be given to India’s leaders in the open source software community. They have fought for, motivated and architected inclusion of open source software into the vision statements of some of the major political parties of India. The best of our tireless warriors fighting to gather political capital for open source have included Venkatesh Hariharan of Red Hat, Jaijit Bhattacharya of Sun Microsystems and Ashish Gautam of IBM.
Posted in FOSS, FreeSoftware, IPR, India, Linux, ODF, OpenSource, OpenStandards.
Tagged with FOSS, FreeSoftware, ODF, OpenGovernment, OpenSource, OpenStandards, Politics.
