I’m very glad to have been invited to this Panel discussion on FOSS and Public Policy by FOSS-United Bangalore Chapter.

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I’ve penned a brief of my conversation and other notes I gathered while preparing for this panel here:

What is Public Policy?

  1. Laws, Regulations, Actions taken by government to achieve the social and economic goals. These goals can be — Doubling the farmers income, building a safe city, building a 5 trillion Dollar economy —etc., Ideally, people play a role in setting these goals (Democracy) — at least by voting for the goals during elections.

FOSS in Public Policy?

  1. Technology is a major tool in achieving these social and economic goals. The argument we make is that this technology should be free and open sourced. Why? Because it is paid for by Public money. It is like when a company hires you for writing a code, it is only reasonable for the company to expect that you share the code with the company. In public policy related matters, company is public.
  2. Example of how Tech/Data can be used in Public Policy (social economic Goal)
    1. Doubling farmers income is a goal. Kisan Call Center Data is available on a daily basis for each district on data.gov.in — This data can be used to build intelligence on pests and other problems faced by farmers. This intelligence can be used towards the goal of doubling farmers income
    2. ICFOSS portfolio.
      1. K-FON Network analysis. — Kerala Government wanted to lay Optical Fiber network. They made this an open-source project to perform network analysis to find the optimum path for the fibers to be laid.
  3. Contribution to FOSS is a far-off topic, even on FOSS usage in GovTech should be increased. So that we save money.

How I started in this FOSS Public Policy intersection?

  1. Not happy with the placements in college. But I did not even know the word “Public Policy” back by then. I was just not happy with the kind of opportunities available.
  2. Family said, “you should do UPSC”
  3. First couple of years with UPSC was fun - learning new things every day.
  4. I didn’t want to say “I will do good work only if I clear this exam”
  5. Found my first job at Lakeer Foundation — using open data to build better Hyderabad. used to work on QGIS (FOSS).

How public policy can shape FOSS?