Software Economy

E-Governance projects can really be a boon to the open source developers. Not only the open way of making the software prevent the governments to get locked to a particular vendor. It will also improve the contribution to the open source development. If a Government tries to open source its software need, it will really help in the development of the economy. It would be nice if the governments have open source repositories similar to the one like SF or berlios. As far as Indian Govt. is considered a lot more has to be done in serving its citizens using IT. I think a single vendor can not serve the purpose. It requires the contributions from the open source community to help in achieving its goal. In India there are more than 25 State Govts. and each Govts. activities are similar to one another. We find House tax, water tax etc. in all the states. But, what each state requires is a small customization and not a complete product from a new vendor. In this way the Govts. can save a lot of money in the software. Thus a Central repository can be maintained at the Central level to which all the Open Source developers contribute. The contributed code will be subjected to auditing by the Govt. authorities before releasing across each states.

The advantage in this kind of approach is that
1) All indian open source developers will contribute to the maximum effort. They can really show their patriotism over here. It helps them to serve their people.
2) Turnkey and Huge projects can be delivered within the time to serve their citizens.
3) Standardized system can be put in place.
4) Support to these systems can easily be found.
5) Help to boost the economy.

This approach does have a lot of disadvantages too
1) Key and Sensitive requirements cannot be handled.
2) Not everything can be customized.