Open Technology Centre was set up in March 2007 in Chennai, as a Division of National Informatics Centre, with funding from DEIT, MCIT.
The overall vision of OTC is to facilitate adoption of Open Technologies in e-Governance and strategic applications and services and also to offer various knowledge-based services & products effectively. It enables e-Governance services to reach vast majority of citizens effectively, even if they live in remote rural areas.
Open Technology Centre functions as a National Knowledge Facility to provide a “Synergy” to the overall components of Open Technology Initiatives such as Open Source Software, Open Standards, Open Hardware, Open Course-ware and Open Product Design that are being taken in various communities in Academics, Research & Development, Science & Technology, Industry and other organisations in India.
Some of the activities carried out by OTC:
- Assisted in preparing National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance
- Coordinating preparation of e-Governance Standards in the areas of Technical Standards for IFEG, Digital Signature, Biometric, Meta Data & Data Standards, Indian Languages for Interoperability with the respective Expert Committees.
- Supported NIC in use of Open source technologies and products in various e-Governance applications and services.
- OTC had represented NIC and BIS in standardisation process of ISO-29500 related activities
- Participated as Indian Representative in the meetings of UN/ CEFACT Trade standards
- Conducted workshops on various Open Source software
- Established a Help Desk facility for Open Source project teams.
- Recommending and promoting the adoption of Open Source Software Stack
- Provisioning support mechanism for Open Source Software Stack
- Provisioned Collaborative-Infrastructure for adoption of Open Source Software
