MeitY plans Tech repository for Digital services

October 4, 2021

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is planning to find a “customer relationship management (CRM) as well as enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions” on the basis of “Free and open-source software (FOSS)”.

Key Points

These solutions would be planned in such a way that it could deploy on its own platform and use it in future for developing other citizen-facing interfaces like Aarogya Setu app or a COWIN platform.
Primary goal of coming up with the solution is to create an open-source software repository which can be accessed and used across the departments, States and countries.
currently, Indian government is working on using FOSS in order to find solutions in agritech, governance, healthcare and education segments.

#FOSS4Gov innovation challenge

To make the solution reality, MeitY had announced #FOSS4Gov Innovation Challenge. As of now, 1,400 registrations have been received from across the country including from tier-II and tier-III cities. Winning teams will find a chance to work with the government on its several population-scale platforms. Teams will also get cash prizes of up to Rs 90 lakh for developing their solution. Three winners will be selected across CRM and ERP categories. First prize will be Rs 20 lakh, second prize of Rs 15 lakh while third prize will be of Rs 10 lakh.

Aim of #FOSS4Gov Innovation Challenge

This challenge is being organised with the aim of creating awareness and promote FOSS. It also seeks to identify solutions which can be used by the government.

Who will mentor the team?

MeitY has partnered with investment firm “Omidyar Network India (ONI)” to mentor the shortlisted teams for this programme. ONI will also be awarding a special prize to the team involved in developing and integrating citizen-centric safeguard to protect citizen’s data.