Policy on open standards and biometric standards for e-Governance was released in the meeting of national e-governance advisory group meet held yesterday under the chairmanship of the Union Minister of Communications and IT, A Raja.

Speaking on the occasion, the minister underlined the importance of interoperability between the various e-governance applications and said that standards will ensure the same. The policy on open standards would provide a framework for selection of open standards to avoid vendor lock-in and develop cost effective and inter-operable e-governance applications. He further added that the launch of the biometric standard for e-governance applications ensures that the various applications are able to exchange the biometric data and are inter-operable. The biometric data being captured will go a long way in ensuring effective targeting and implementation of various social benefit schemes. This will control fraud and ghost applicants for availing benefits.

Sachin Pilot, minister of State for Communications and IT, said on the occasion that Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have tremendous potential to enable access to critical public services and information efficiently, speedily and in a cost effective manner. He further added that these standards will go a long way on ensuring the uniformity in accessibility to critical information and services

Over 200 representatives from central and the state governments, NASSCOM, public and private Sector and academia including the chief minister of Goa, the minister of IT, Government of Madhya Pradesh, minister of IT, West Bengal, the advisor to the government of Nagaland among others, expressed their views on policy issues and strategic interventions necessary for accelerating introduction of e-Governance across central and state government ministries/departments.