Background

E-governance projects sometimes go through disintegration and duplicity in the nation. Development cycles tend to be long for Government applications. It is due to the low standardization level and existence of numerous applications in deposit. This altogether results in low quality and high development cost. The project takes a long time to get implemented in the country. There are many cases in which source code is not properly archived for custom apps.

It has been analyzed that open source tools and software have unique success all over the globe. The eminent companies such as YouTube, Google, etc., are built with open source software.

Open source communities such as Android, WordPress, etc., are driving low cost development and innovation. There are various source code archives such as Sourceforge, GitHub, etc. They have made it feasible for lots of open source developers to share their code and work jointly.

For this, the Government of India set up a platform called Open-Forge.

Let’s discuss all about the platform.

What is Open-Forge?

Open-Forge is an e-governance platform set up by the Government of India. It is set up for open combined e-governance app development. The Government wants to advance the usage of open source software through this platform. In addition, they are planning to reuse and share source code related to e-governance.

The Department of Electronics & IT, Government of India implemented a framework in 2015. It was the “Policy on collaborative App development by Opening the Source Code of Government Application”. The framework was implemented to archive source code in archives developed by Government custom. Besides this, the framework enables the opening of these archives to promote reuse, share and remix.

The Govt. wants to motivate combined development by opening the source code. This joint effort will be between Private institutions and Government dept./agencies. The developers and citizens’ joint effort will drive the innovative app & service creation for e-governance.

What are the objectives of the Open-Forge?

The objective of Open-Forge is to:

• Decrease development cycles
• Maintain version control for Government source code
• Provide a platform to maintain code archives
• Fasten the e-Governance apps application in India
• Provide e-Governance solutions and services with high security and quality. It will be via enhancing mass peer review and transparency.
• Decrease project cost of e-governance
• Bring ownerships’ total cost down via system of reuse, share and remix.
• Promotion of open combined app development culture. It will be between institutions and citizens & public agencies and private institutions.

How does it work?

Source

The Open-Forge platform permits two feasible joint effort models. They are as follows:

Government to Government (G2G)

In the G2G model, the Government members/agencies can only create projects in a controlled mode. The project manager will approve the membership of these projects. They will be limited to Government individuals only.

Government to Community (G2C)

The community or Govt. members can create projects in G2C via public mode. Any person can contribute to open source code with combined development and take part in these projects. But the subject of the approval will depend on the project manager. The managers can choose their way to configure the settings of project access.

There can be a G2G special case when a specific Govt. department selects a project for private use. Please note that only Govt. entities are allowed to have a private use project.

Types of Open-Forge project

The Open-Forge platform targets the apps for e-Governance. Any project that deals with civic areas or governance is welcome. The platform doesn’t allow apps without any evident governance overlap. It has the right to decide whether the particular app is suitable or not for Open-Forge.

Users in Open-Forge

The types of users available on OpenForge are mentioned below:

Registered user:

Users who have an OpenForge account can access all public projects. This accessibility will be permitted by the project admins. The user will have to sign in into the account for joining Open-Forge. They will not require approval for joining the platform.

The registered user will have to submit a request for initiating a new task. Open Forge will approve the request within 24 hrs.

Project Managers:

The registered users become the managers of the newly created Open Forge project. These users have the full right over the project. They cannot delete the project. For this, they will have to contact Open Forge.

Project Members:

The registered user will contact its manager to become a member of a specific project. They will be given diverse levels of access on the basis of roles defined by the project admins.

Anonymous Users:

If the user is in a logged-out state, he/she can visit Open Forge and browse its pages.

FAQs

Q1. Do I need to pay fees for using Open Forge?

No, you aren’t required to pay any fee for using the Open Forge platform.

Q2. How can a registered user set up a new project on the platform?

The registered user will have to create a request for submitting a new project. OpenForge will approve it and then the user can access the project. The user will have to insert all the details while creating a project request.

Q3. Which version of the control system is used in Open Forge?

There are two most well-known versions of the control system that are Git and SVN. They both are used in Open Forge these days.