This story [ http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/08/smallbusiness/internet_for_india.fsb/index.htm] from CNN's India report, discussing Comat's approach in Karnataka, has several interesting pointers to setting up (and dealing with difficulties thereof) rural oriented networking and data services, in connection with, but not necessarily in partnership with, the government. In fact, if you read carefully, you will see that Comat did not actually make money from its Karnataka contracts. Its profits have come when it provided the document digitisation for free, charging end-users tiny fees to access and submit public-service related forms.
As against this, note that a few months ago, when I needed to submit an online passport application form, and didn't want to return home to do it, the service fee being charged by kiosks in Worli was Rs 300 (includes cost of filling in form and printing the multi-page acknowledgment), which is hardly a tiny fee (I returned home and filled in the form myself, and was very pleasantly surprised to note that I could do it using Firefox). I mention this because we (in this forum) are engaged in formulating an approach to education services, starting with teacher training, and it appears to me that there is scope and synergy to tweak Comat's business model to design a collaborative approach with multiple partners (could be individuals, groups of individuals, or companies) here in Maharashtra, using FOSS tools (and, I hope, infusing it with the FOSS spirit). In fact, and this may be a very serious reason to join hands, digitising with FOSS tools and creating open standard documents online for access is in itself a way to forestall some 'public-private-partnership' from doing the same with proprietary formats. There are several such schemes floating about already, beginning with the tatters of the Mission 2007 initiative. -- Vickram http://communicall.wordpress.com
_______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
