Discussion on IT Policy 2008 Draft

Today, an interaction program for discussion on Draft of IT Policy 2008 was held at HLCIT. Me, Shankhar, Hempal dai, Jitendra, Dadhiram Dai and Sharad ji were Present from FOSS Nepal.

The program was well conducted. I think we were able to do for what we were there. The program discussed on every point and issues related to ICT and policy making. Mr. Manohar Bhattarai presented the draft policy and draft action plan to follow that policy. The discussion was over his presentation i.e not only policy but action plan as well.

Well, I cannot write what everyone said but will definitely write what we said/discussed.

Since there was very short time to analyse both the policies(2000 and 2008), i somehow managed to give at least some input. thanx FOSS Guys present at IRC yesterday ....

After much huddles to grasp the microphone, I talked on following things.

1. In action Plan presented, in point 3.4 of Human Resource Development section, It was said ..implementing body for IT in Education will be MOEST and MOE(Education). I highlighted on what FOSS/HENN and other NGO are doing so asked to add "concerned NGO" as well in implementing body.
2. In IT policy of 2000, there was defined role/work of NAST(National Academy of Science and Technology) which was lacking in new draft. So I put the point that NAST should be transformed to attractive place/center for ICT and Science.
3. I also talked on Importance of government's ICT Laboratory, research center and FOSS research/development center. To backup, I also cited the importance of making entire government website uniform and secure through the content management system and other possible ways which can be done only through the establishment of R&D center.
4. It was said that Government will promote FOSS and Open Standard in public as well as Private sector. Citing examples of how ICT is hampered by US political blockade in various countries, how Russia's teacher was penalized for using pirated windows and how Brazil is doing with FOSS,etc, With all these examples I defended the point that the point written in policy about FOSS was not enough. For this government must keep FOSS in top priority and not only will government promote FOSS but also keep it in priority and not only in public and private sector but also in government sector.
   
5. Regarding Open standard, I strongly talked about its implementation- "All Government offices and public sector must at least adapt open standard". To support it I cited the problem with election commission website and its font.

With this much of points from my side I handover the microphone to Shankar. he added the examples how various countries are taking and leading with FOSS; What they are doing. Later Hempal dai added few more things like-

1. There was written "We will take step for strong implementation of IPR". He suggested to change the line to "we will take appropriate step for IPR implementation". Because all govt. offices are using pirated softwares till date. Is Government capable of purchasing softwares for each machine or migrating to FOSS suddenly/in no time?? So the point was asked to be made more flexible.
2. Importance of Open Content to preserve language, cultural informations and all things of traditional/cultural importance. Its imprtance was highlighted.

With this and other discussion program ended.

I was not able to put some more things due to limited time.

1. Open Hardware whould also be promoted.
2. Open content should be in government's most priority work when we are talking about ICT for education and ICT based education.
3. Good brains are flooding to developed countries. How can we catch this. Its very serious problem for the country. Need of creating job opportunities and increasing ICT education is top level education sectors, its establishment.
4. E-governance... training and workshops are being conducted for e-governance application implementations. It should be made FOSS/ Linux centric and as these are/must be web based applications, there is always flexiblity. To reduce ICT cost and promote Freedom...FOSS must be there.
5. Localization must be continued and its development must be supported by government. Now when words of federal states are being spelled out, Localization will play one major roles. Along with this Standard Localization glossary must be maintained which must be revised every year and it should focus on making localized software readlable and usable easily and not to focus only on linguistically correct words and phases.
6. Taxes on development , export/import of FOSS projects/ softwares should be exempted to promote its use in every possible sector of the State.

I think we can put forward these points as well in future meetings and programs.


I feel very proud to be in the place where i am participating in the making of IT policy of my country.