SFLC.in's suggestions on Strategy for National Open Digital Ecosystems (NODE)

We have Submitted our suggestions on the Strategy for National Open Digital Ecosystem (NODE). With NODE the Government of India is imagining the architecture of a powerful software industrial policy, using government service platforms as the infrastructural centre of software ecosystems that will be the context for technology development, business enterprise, and improvements in the daily lives of citizens.

As with any initiative so ambitious, these first expressions of the overall design will require immense efforts to fill in the blank spaces. This process can only be achieved by broadening the scale of social involvement in the design. The present document reflects well the conceptions and needs of the entrepreneurial business sector but ignores all other forms of contribution crucial to a maximally healthy ecosystem in addition to these organizations.

It explains powerfully how venture-capital funded start-ups can be seeded by the immense reach of the government service platforms but it does not address role of citizens and CivicTech to provide legitimacy to the process. SFLC.in which has over a decade of experience working with Free and Open Source Software communities in India accompanied with a strong body of work on civil liberties makes the following recommendations: