THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan has given the green signal for revising the information technology (IT) policy of the State Government.

This opens up debate on a number of issues, such as the level of incentives for investors and norms for e-governance programmes.

The Department of Information Technology will shortly be organising consultations with IT professionals and others on the contours of the policy.

One of the key issues to be debated is whether the current incentives to the IT industry should be continued. Competitive offering of incentives have found States offering heavy subsidies, which were not justified by the business being brought in by the investors. States such as Karnataka is now backing out from this.

Mr. Achuthanandan was one who opposed excessive concessions for the Smart City Project proposed by the previous Government. He is expected to ensure that real estate acquired by the Government and subsidies do not turn out to be something of bigger interest to the investors than their businesses.

Another question is whether the incentives should be focussed on specified areas of investment. A sure bet for prioritised incentives would be development of free- and open-source software. Any concession that the Government in this area may give will devolve to the community at large.

It is still not too late for the State to embark on a comprehensive policy on free and open software. This should cover education at all levels, e-governance programmes and application development. The Government will have to develop institutions that can further application development and research and support the Government's e-initiatives. .

This scenario will involve training of students as well as Government officials in the use of Linux- based systems from the beginning itself. Along with that, businesses providing application support and development can come up. Such mutually supportive systems can lead to wealth generation without heavy investments in most cases. Ultimately, Kerala should be able to offer services worldwide and improve its export earnings.

The policy this time will be giving more emphasis to defining e-governance initiatives. There is need to clearly define open standards and formats for Governmental data. Now that the State information infrastructure is more or less in place (after much delay), it is time to locate applications and data at the Government's own data centre in Thiruvananthapuram so that its capacity can be fully used.

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