Members irked with Nasscom over

Indian IT and BPO trade body Nasscom’s suggestion that multiple standards should be chosen over a single standard for e-governance projects has irked a few members who say they weren’t consulted over the issue.

Source said IBM, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems weren’t consulted before Nasscom recommended multiple standards to the IT ministry.
The decision on an open standard for citizens’ data and land records, etc, has already been delayed by several months. With this new rift emerging between Nasscom and its members, it could be delayed further.

A Nasscom spokesperson said, “Nasscom is in the middle of consultative process with different stakeholders and won’t be commenting on this issue.”

Single standard is supported by the open document format (ODF) brigade that includes IBM, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems in India while multiple standards are supported by Microsoft, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and industry bodies like Manufacturers’ Association of Information Technology  and Nasscom. Vendors for all e-governance projects will have to support all the data only in the standard chosen finally as all the projects are through public-private-partnership. IBM declined comment on the issue.

The IT department, over the last few months, has swung from supporting single standard to multiple standards, but hasn’t made a final decision, eventually delaying the whole process. Jaijit Bhattacharya, the country director of government strategy for Sun Microsystems India, said, “Nasscom didn’t consult us before giving its opinion on the issue. If it is talking on the behalf of the industry, we should have been consulted. Now the decision will be delayed again.”

Last week, Venkatesh Hariharan, director (corporate affairs), Red Hat India, shot off a letter to Nasscom president Som Mittal. “We have been informed that Nasscom has submitted its opinion on the Draft Open Standards Policy for e-governance to the government of India. We have been told the submission supports the inclusion of standards under Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and also the usage of multiple standards in the same domain. Red Hat has been involved in the standards issue and we would like to place on record that we haven’t been consulted by Nasscom before this submission was made,” said the letter. Nasscom is yet to reply to Hariharan’s letter.